THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING TREES

The aspen glitters in the wind
And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of August
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.

Mountains, sky,
The aspen doing something in the wind.

描述樹木的問題

白楊在風中閃爍
讓我們喜悅。
樹葉飄飛，翻轉，
因為在炎熱的八月那舉止
使其細胞保持水分。三角葉楊
同樣如此。

基因庫拋棄不穩定的莖
而樹跳舞。不，
樹被利用了。
不，言說有局限，
在語言裏，樹做了什麼。

很好，有時因為詩歌使我們醒悟。
跟我跳舞，舞者。哦，我願意。
山，天空，
白楊在風中做著什麼。

翻譯 © 遠洋

THAT MUSIC

The creek’s silver in the sun of almost August,
And bright dry air, and last runnels of snowmelt,
Percolating through the roots of mountain grasses
Vinegar weed, golden smoke, or meadow rust,

Do they confer, do the lovers’ bodies
In the summer dusk, his breath, her sleeping face,
Confer—, does the slow breeze in the pines?
If you were the interpreter, if that were your task.

那音樂

在近八月的太陽裏，小溪泛著銀色，
明亮而乾燥的空氣，融雪的最後的溝渠，
滲入山草的根
醋雜草，金色的煙霧，或鏽病的草地，

它們交談嗎，在那夏日的薄暮中
情人的身體，他的氣息，她睡熟的臉，
交談嗎——松林裏緩慢的微風呢？
倘若你是解釋者。倘若那是你的職責。

翻譯 © 遠洋

SEPTEMBER, INVERNESS

Tomales Bay is flat blue in the Indian summer heat.
This is the time when hikers on Inverness Ridge
Stand on tiptoe to pick ripe huckleberries
That the deer can’t reach. This is the season of lulls—
Egrets hunting in the tidal shallows, a ribbon
Of sandpipers fluttering over mudflats, white,
Then not. A drift of mist wisping off the bay.
This is the moment when bliss is what you glimpse
From the corner of your eye, as you drive past
Running errands, and the wind comes up,
And the surface of the water glitters hard against it.

九月，因弗內斯

深秋初冬小陽春裏，托馬萊斯灣呈現平淡之藍。
這個時節，背包客在因弗內斯山脊上
踮起腳尖站立，采摘鹿搆不著的
成熟的小葉越橘果。這是間歇的季節－－
白鷺在潮汐淺灘尋覓，一條鷸鳥的緞帶
雪白，在泥灘之上擺動，
而後消失。飄逸的薄霧一縷縷從海灣散去。
就在此刻，狂喜是來自你眼角的
一瞥，當你跑差事
驅車經過，狂風大作。
而水面波光遒勁地迎風閃爍。

翻譯 © 遠洋

因弗內斯：美國加州的因弗內斯，原為印第安人聚居地。

小陽春：原文為the Indian summer heat，直譯即「印第安暖洋洋的夏日」。此時當地風和日麗，氣候宜人。

托馬萊斯灣：坐落在舊金山西北四百公里處，出產美味的牡蠣。

VARIATIONS ON A PASSAGE IN EDWARD ABBEY

A dune begins with an obstacle—a stone, a shrub, a log,
anything heavy enough to resist being moved by the wind.

This obstacle forms a wind shadow on its leeward side
making eddies in the currents, now fast, now slow, of the air,

exactly as a rock in a stream causes an eddy in the water.
Within the eddy the wind moves with less force and less velocity

than the airstreams on either side, creating what geologists call
the surface of discontinuity. And it is here that the wind

tends to drop part of its load of sand. The sand particles,
which hop or bounce along the earth before the wind,

begin to accumulate,
        creating a greater eddy in the air currents
and capturing still more sand.
                                              It’s thus a dune is formed.

Viewed in cross section, sand dunes display a characteristic profile.
On the windward side the angle of ascent is low and gradual—

twenty to twenty-five degrees from the horizontal. On the leeward side
the slope is much steeper, usually about thirty-four degrees—

the angle of repose of sand and most other loose materials.
The steep side of the dune is called the slip face
                                                                          because of the slides
that occur as sand is driven up the windward side
and deposited on or just over the crest.
                                                            The weight of the crest
eventually becomes greater than can be supported by the sand beneath,
so the extra sand slumps down the slip face
                                                                   and the whole dune
advances in the direction of the prevailing wind, until some obstacle
like a mountain intervenes.
                                         This movement, this grand slow march
across the earth’s surface, has an external counterpart in the scouring
movement of glaciers,
                                 and an internal one in the movement of grief
which has something in it of the desert’s bareness
and of its distances.

愛德華·艾比一段短文的變體

沙丘形成於障礙——石頭，灌木叢，原木，
一切重得足以抵抗被風吹動的東西。

這種障礙在其背風面形成一個風幕
在氣流中，在忽快忽慢的風中制造旋渦，

正如溪流裏的岩石在水中引起旋渦。
在旋渦之內，風在兩側以氣流較少的

力量和速度運動，生成地質學家稱之的
突變面。正是在這裏，風

要甩落它所負載的沙塵的一部分。沙子微粒，
順風沿著地球跳躍或顛跑，

開始積聚，
        在氣流中生成更大的旋渦
並捕捉更多的沙子。
                                從而一個沙丘形成。

在橫截面觀看，沙丘呈現一個典型的輪廓。
在迎風面螺旋角低而平緩——

與地平線成二十到二十五度角。在背風面
斜坡非常陡峭，通常大約三十四度角——

是沙和大多數其他松軟物質的休止角。
沙丘的陡沿被稱之為背風面
                                           由於
當沙子被抬上迎風面並堆積於丘頂
或稍過丘頂時發生的滑動。
                                   丘頂的重量
最終變得比下方的沙能夠支撐的還大，
那麼額外的沙重重地落下背風面
                                           而整個沙丘
在主風的方向裏演進，直到遇到某些障礙
比如說山脈橫亙其間。
                               這種運動，這種穿過地球表面
宏偉緩慢的行進，與冰川的洗擦運動
外在相應，又與暗湧的悲傷
－－其中有沙漠的裸露與遙遠，
內在相應。

翻譯 © 遠洋

愛德華·艾比（Edward Abbey, 1927—1989），美國著名生態文學作家。

IOWA, JANUARY

In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.

愛荷華，一月

漫漫冬夜，農夫做著細長的夢。
他一遍又一遍走進壟溝。

翻譯 © 史春波

THREE DAWN SONGS IN SUMMER

1.
The first long shadows in the fields
Are like mortal difficulty.
The first birdsong is not like that at all.

2.
The light in summer is very young and wholly unsupervised.
No one has made it sit down to breakfast.
It’s the first one up, the first one out.

3.
Because he has opened his eyes, he must be light
And she, sleeping beside him, must be the visible,
One ringlet of hair curled about her ear.
Into which he whispers, “Wake up!”
“Wake up!” he whispers.

三首夏季黎明之歌

1.
田間第一道拉長的影子
像是死亡的長度。
第一聲鳥鳴絕非如此。

2.
夏日之光多麼年輕，無拘無束。
沒有人叫它坐下吃早餐。
它最先起身，最先出門。

3.
他已經睜開了眼睛，他必然是光
而她，睡在他身旁，必然是形象，
一綹卷髮纏繞耳際。
他朝裏面輕聲說，「醒醒！」
「醒醒！」他輕聲說。

翻譯 © 史春波

THE APPLE TREES AT OLEMA

They are walking in the woods along the coast
and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon
two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened
every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten
but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire
of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches.
Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine
flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted
leaf-green flower whose name they didn’t know.
Trout lily, he said; she said, adder’s-tongue.
She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring
of the apple blossoms. He is exultant,
as if some thing he felt were verified,
and looks to her to mirror his response.
If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay
fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.
He could be knocking wildly at a closed door
in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss
resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock.
Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh
of appetite in the cold white blossoms
that had startled her. Now they seem tender
and where she was repelled she takes the measure
of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer
has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy
as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset.
The light catching in the spray that spumes up
on the reef is the color of the lesser finch
they notice now flashing dull gold in the light
above the field. They admire the bird together,
it draws them closer, and they start to walk again.
A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way.
Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man
in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number
of his room close to the center of his mind
gravely and delicately, as if it were the key,
and then he wanders among strangers all he wants.

奧利馬的蘋果樹

他倆走在海邊的樹林中
和荒蕪的草地上，碰見
兩棵蒼老得被遺忘的蘋果樹。
苔蘚增厚枝椏，樹幹看似腐爛
卻繁花怒放，小小新葉的綠色火焰，
閃爍在哪怕最無生機的枝條上。
藍眼睛，罌粟花，散落的羽扇豆
遍布於草地，還有一種錯綜如豹紋的
綠葉花，他倆不知其名。
他說是狗牙紅蓮；她說是山慈菇。
她顫慄於那蘋果花的原始、潔白，
逆光的火焰，他狂喜雀躍，
彷彿他感覺到的東西被證實，
並指望她有同樣的反應。
要是在午後，令我失望的一彎瘦月
像一塊傷疤在天空逐漸消逝，朝著他倆的東邊。
在夢中，他可能會瘋狂地敲擊著
一扇關閉的門。同時，她想，那苔蘚
似船塢上輕微晾乾的海藻。
撕裂肉體，冷白的花朵裏
反復撕裂的肉體之欲
令她震驚。此刻它們顯得溫柔，
在令她厭惡的地方，她打量樹
並讓它們進入內心。但他已不再
擁有蘋果樹了。如此悲傷或快樂，
正如潮水，在日落時潮漲潮落。
光芒被困於暗礁上噴起的水霧，
跟他倆注意到的田野上空
光芒中的小金翅雀一樣，閃爍著
暗淡的金色。他們一同贊賞鳥兒，
這使他倆靠近，他倆又開始步行。
一個小男孩遊蕩在旅館走廊。
一道門後，一位女僕。另一道門後，
穿條紋睡衣的一個男子刮著臉。
他在頭腦裏嚴肅而細致地
記住他的房號，就像它是鑰匙，
然後在陌生人中隨心所欲地漫遊。

翻譯 © 遠洋

MEASURE

Recurrences.
Coppery light hesitates
again in the small-leaved

Japanese plum. Summer
and sunset, the peace
of the writing desk

and the habitual peace
of writing, these things
form an order I only

belong to in the idleness
of attention. Last light
rims the blue mountain

and I almost glimpse
what I was born to,
not so much in the sunlight

or the plum tree
as in the pulse
that forms these lines.

測度

重現。
紫銅色的光又一次
在小葉的日本李子樹裏

躊躇。夏天
日落時分，書桌的
平靜

以及寫作慣常的
平靜，在閑散的注意裏
這些事情

形成一種我從屬的
秩序。最後的光
鑲邊於藍色的山脈

而我幾乎瞥見
我為何而生，
並非在陽光

或李樹中。
而更是在脈搏裏，
形成這些詩行。

翻譯 © 遠洋

CHILD NAMING FLOWERS

When old crones wandered in the woods,
I was the hero on the hill
in clear sunlight.

Death’s hounds feared me.

Smell of wild fennel,
high loft of sweet fruit high in the branches
of the flowering plum.

Then I am cast down
into the terror of childhood,
into the mirror and the greasy knives,
the dark
woodpile under the fig trees
in the dark.
                  It is only
the malice of voices, the old horror
that is nothing, parents
quarreling, somebody
drunk.

I don’t know how we survive it.
On this sunny morning
in my life as an adult, I am looking
at one clear pure peach
in a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe.
It is all the fullness that there is
in light. A towhee scratches in the leaves
outside my open door.
He always does.

A moment ago I felt so sick
and so cold
I could hardly move.

給花朵命名的孩子

醜老太婆們在樹林裏漫步的時候，
我曾是小山上的英雄
在明淨的陽光中。

死神的獵犬害怕我。

野茴香的氣味，
高高閣樓的甜蜜果實
高掛在開花的李子樹枝裏。

接著我被扔下
落入童年的恐怖，
落入鏡子和油汙的刀叢，
黑暗
無花果樹下的柴堆
在黑暗裏。
                    這只有
惡意的聲音，古老的恐怖
算得了什麼，父母親
吵架，有人
喝醉了。

我不知道我們如何從中活下來。
在這個陽光的早晨，
在我作為成年人的生活裏，我看著
純淨晶瑩的桃子
在一幅喬治娜·奧基弗的繪畫中。
這是萬物在光中的豐滿。
紅眼雀發出刮擦聲
在我敞開的門外樹葉間。
他刮個不停。

片刻之前，我覺得那麼惡心
那麼冷
我幾乎無法動彈。

翻譯 © 遠洋

喬治娜·奧基弗（Georgia O’Keeffe）：生於1887年11月15日，逝於1986年3月6日。美國畫家。她的作品是20世紀20年代美國藝術的經典代表。她被列為20世紀的藝術大師，並享有「美國畢加索」的美譽。她的繪畫作品以半抽象半寫實的手法聞名。

MAPS

Sourdough French bread and pinot chardonnay

*

Apricots—
the downy buttock shape
hard black sculpture of the limbs
on Saratoga hillsides in the rain.

*

These were the staples of the China trade:
sea otter, sandalwood, and bêche-de-mer

*

The pointillist look of laurels
their dappled pale green body stirs
down valley in the morning wind
Daphne was supple
my wife is tan, blue-rippled
pale in the dark hollows

Kit Carson in California:
It was the eyes of fish
that shivered in him the tenderness of eyes
he watched the ships come in
at Yerba Buena once, found obscene
the intelligence of crabs
their sidelong crawl, gulls
screeching for white meat,
flounders in tubs, startled

*

Musky fall—
slime of a saffron milkcap
the mottled amanita
delicate phallic toxic

*

How old
the fruity warmth of zinfandel
geometries of “rational viticulture”

    Plucked from algae sea spray
cold sun and a low rank tide
    sea cucumbers
lolling in the crevices of rock
they traded men enough
to carve old Crocker’s railway out of rock
to eat these slugs
bêche-de-mer

*

The night they bombed Hanoi
we had been drinking red pinot
that was winter the walnut tree was bare
and the desert ironwood where waxwings
perched in spring drunk on pyracantha
squalls headwinds days gone
north on the infelicitous Pacific

*

The bleak intricate erosion of these cliffs

    seas grown bitter
with the salt of continents

*

Jerusalem artichokes
raised on sandy bluffs at San Gregorio
near reedy beaches where the steelhead ran

Coast range runoff turned salt creek
in the heat and indolence of August

*

That purple in the hills
    owl’s clover stiffening the lupine
while the white flowers of the pollinated plant
    seep red

the eye owns what is familiar
    felt along the flesh
“an amethystine tinge”

*

Chants, recitations:
Olema
Tamalpais Mariposa
Mendocino Sausalito San Rafael
Emigrant Gap
Donner Pass

Of all the laws
that bind us to the past
the names of things are
stubbornest

*

Late summer—
red berries darken the hawthorns
curls of yellow in the laurels
your body and the undulant
sharp edges of the hills

*

Clams, abalones, cockles, chitons, crabs

*

Ishi
in San Francisco, 1911:
it was not the sea he wondered at
that inland man who saw the salmon
die to spawn and fed his dwindling people
from their rage to breed
it was the thousands of white bodies
on the beach
“Hansi saltu…” so many
ghosts

*

The long ripple in the swamp grass
is a skunk
he shuns the day

地圖冊

發酵的法式長條面包和比諾莎當妮葡萄酒

*

杏子——
那有絨毛的臀部形狀
樹枝的鐵黑色雕像
在雨中薩拉托加山坡上

*

這些曾是中國貿易的主要商品：
海獺，檀香木，以及食用海參

*

月桂樹的點彩畫樣子
它們有斑點的淡綠色樹幹
沿著山谷在晨風中攪動
瑞香柔和
我太太是棕色、藍色的漣漪
在黑暗的空間變得蒼白

*

凱特·卡爾森在加利福尼亞：
那是魚的眼睛
那樣顫抖於他內心那溫柔的眼睛
他曾看著船抵達
耶爾巴布埃納島，覺得可憎：
蟹類的智力
它們橫向爬行，海鷗
為那白肉發出尖叫，
桶中的比目魚，驚恐

*

麝香的秋天——
黏滑的松乳菇
斑駁的傘形毒菌
嬌嫩的陰莖般的毒物

*

多麼古老
果味溫和的馨芳葡萄酒
「合理的葡萄栽培」的幾何學研究

    採自大海噴吐的海藻
寒冷的太陽和低落的潮汐
    海參
在礁石裂縫裏懶洋洋地躺著
它們交易人足以
雕刻岩石中古老瓦罐的軌跡
吃這些蛞蝓
食用海參

*

夜晚他們轟炸河內
我們在喝著加州紅葡萄酒
那是冬天胡桃樹光禿
而在沙漠鐵木那兒太平鳥
棲息於火棘上春天的醉熏熏裏
風暴頂頭風的日子去了
北方在不幸的太平洋上

*

這些複雜侵蝕的陰冷峭壁

    海變得苦澀
由於大陸的鹽

*

菊芋
升起在聖格雷戈里奧含沙的斷崖上
靠近蘆葦叢生、虹鱒洄遊的海灘

在八月的炎熱和懶散裏
海岸山脈徑流變成含鹽的小溪

*

那群山中的紫色
    貓頭鷹三葉草使羽扇豆堅硬
然而異花授粉植物的白色花朵
    滲出紅色

眼睛認可常見的
    感覺屬於肉體
「一種紫水晶的淺淡色調」

*

吟詠，念誦
奧利馬
塔馬爾帕斯山蝴蝶百合
門多西諾　索薩利托　聖拉菲爾
移民城
唐納山口

所有的慣例
那樣將我們束縛在過去
事物之名
難以對付

*

夏末——
紅色的漿果將那山楂變黑
月桂樹裏黃色的卷髮
你的軀幹和群山
波浪形鋒利的邊緣

*

蛤蚌，鮑魚，鳥蛤，石鱉，螃蟹

*

國際種子健康促進會
1911年，在舊金山：
讓他感到吃驚的不是海
那個內陸人見過鮭魚
死於產卵，提供食物給他日益減少的同胞
在它們的繁殖熱裏
是成千上萬雪白的軀體
在海灘上
「很多白人……」那麼多
幽靈

*

沼澤草叢中經久不息的漣漪
是一只臭鼬
他晝伏夜出

翻譯 © 遠洋

AFTER GOETHE

In all the mountains,
Stillness;
In the treetops
Not a breath of wind.
The birds are silent in the woods.
Just wait: soon enough
You will be quiet too.

歌德之後

群山靜止，
樹梢間
沒有一絲風。
森林裏的鳥沉寂了。
再等一等：很快
你也將安靜下來。

翻譯 © 史春波