Whitman at the Bardo

Invoking Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, the poem that is Whitman at the Bardo worries-is troubled through and by-the intermedial site of death-in-life, of life that has not yet moved into death but exists as claimant and petitioner, shadow and light. As we read in Tibetan Book of the Dead:

Alas, now as the intermediate state of the time of death arises before me,

Renouncing all attachment, yearning and subjective apprehension in every respect,

I must undistractedly enter the path, one which the oral teachings are clearly understood,

And eject my own awareness into the uncreated expanse of space.

Immediately upon separation from this compounded body of flesh and blood,

I must know this body to be like a transient illusion.

Translated by Gyurme Dorje