Zang-Di
Three Poems translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman
A Father’s Love Primer
Difficult dawn. The uproar of sparrows
shatters the night’s glass backdoor.
But quiet stillness after all is not like the stillness of death;
quiet stillness takes the beautiful dawn and puts it out to pasture
on the hazy riverbank, good thoughts come too late;
the early autumn mist lightly unties a white bundle,
trying to soften fate’s riddles
into a semblance of the world: it’s as though
“the sun also rises” is pulled open between
you and I, and it isn’t a kind of distance
but a kind of angle. I won’t pray
that a father’s longing can do miracles,
I only pray that my love for you
amid the consolation of time
will never be less than my promises to you.
Son, you were unique, but the tangible evidence
is so sparse; so much
so that no human depiction
can ever bring you back entirely
to the reality of existence. Even worse,
with the earth’s rotating axis, the seasons elapse
and around me, the plants that might substitute for you
are not too rare, but too abundant:
this is the cruelest aspect of the world.
Suppose I indulge in human weakness, or
suppose I try to weaken my rage,
it would immediately turn your dim replacements
into something like passing clouds, turning me numb
inside the fences of fate. So, what’s even more difficult is a father’s love.
What once made life so vivid now makes memory engulf itself in a kind of arrogance—
in shadows, you’re still as lively
as all the living things here amidst small curiosity.
Former Sacred Place Primer
Whatever can be counted, count it—
in two hours, even though reality is unbearable,
life will be smaller than a lotus pond in August.
This is our sacred place. It doesn’t even need
unnecessary hints, simple because level,
the song of the earth can delay many things
with our bodies. So fortunate,
and yet such a thing could occur:
I grew in your growth,
you were innocent in my innocence.
More precisely, a lonely harvest
turns out to involve a father’s pride
or even a lifelong pride, and it always started
with your happiness. It even gave nature a long break,
it couldn’t keep up with how we followed each other.
The daylight and tree shadows of summer
surge up from different sides toward you and me,
looking for a substitute for the world on our bodies.
Let’s put it more simply.
Looking for material, the biggest difference
between cicadas and men is that, in this enormous universe
I was the only one you called father.
Take Dawn as an Example Primer
Across the reeds, two egrets
head from north to south along the center of the river,
flying together to their secret home.
How many times did I call to you to catch something,
as the world is something that can be caught.
But in fact, the ones who truly lifted to us
were birds long considered
not to be the perfect messengers.
Excess grief is excessive pride;
son, I have better reasons, more ample suggestions,
but they’re not an example of the best kind of visitor.
The worst danger is that love cannot overturn
human stupidity. I jog along the embankment,
turning the infinite indistinct sea of pain into a small suburban river.
You flow out from it, like fresh sweat.
But they are hurrying before the world closes
to suspend their graceful bodies into
a measure directed at the darkness
inside our bodies. If you’re listening,
please believe this, death can no longer challenge me.