Zang Di
Translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman
In the remains of reason I am aware
that the final glance won't
vanish in an ocean's cold indifference. Returning to reality,
the borders are blurry. Thankfully time's caverns
ward off time's alterations,
still deep and silent within life's secrets;
dandelions, purslane, moongrass,
the shadows of grapevines and hawthorns
preserve the sequence of the caverns' entrances—
I enter from this side, and the dark is the direction of darkness
as though in the heaviness of loss
the dark also offers the benevolence of darkness;
you enter from that side, that gradually shortening
and for me ever unnamable distance;
separated by life and death, you and I
fumble about, even more stubborn than darkness,
and so can still unite in an embrace—
as though with a bit of effort, an instant of immortality
will accede to my hand holding
that little shovel you once used.
from the journal BENNINGTON REVIEW
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"Translating Zang Di’s work is always a deep pleasure, although the topic of this particular poem is that of a devastating loss. Yet throughout his work, Zang Di reminds us that 'the dark also offers the benevolence of darkness,' perhaps an especially important lesson in these dark times. Poetry from other languages and cultures can explode our myopic ways of thinking and biases, and is more necessary now than ever."

Eleanor Goodman on "An Instant of Immortality Primer"
Cover of Mary Oppen's autobiography, Meaning a Life
Eight Decades of Mary Oppen

"Now, when we are more atomized than ever—by partisanship and political lies, by contagion and its economic fallout—reading Mary’s autobiography reminds us that life is important, but that living is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is, as she tells us from the start, meaning."
 
via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
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