Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
No, my sunrise never will break his dark night,
Nor can strength of mine o’er the azure him drive:
He, a silent thing that oft guards the dark void,
Stands at the margin.
Question not, interrogate not this heart then,
What has made self-value but the hiatus
In eroded texts, or lacuna in the
Annals of history.
Where is that ebullient, profound and deep self,
Who, with power fathomless like the vexed wave,
Longs to score her feats—to inscribe her name in
Scrolls of her language?
Those determinations that soar will ne’er (I
Know) console my own misanthropic gloom, nor
Can my placid smile belie my heart’s fear—
My trepidation
O’er the sinking into the abyss ... Who knows
Whence it comes that Time and Ambition, my true
Allies, like a twain of unbridled white steeds
Race in abandon?
Kunyuan Zhang is the author of Yao Hua Ji, a classical Chinese poetry collection, published in 2019 in The Writers Publishing House, a large-scale national publishing house in China. A graduate of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio (IYWS), Kunyuan published her poetry in Teen Ink Magazine amongst others.