ARGUMENT

When I describe
your absence,
here you are
with me
on the white sheets
of paper.

Last week
on real sheets
I covered my ears against your talk of leaving—
there was no such talk.
It is an old argument:

the tree falling
in the forest
with no one
to hear.
Now I am lost
in that forest.

爭吵

當我描述
你的缺席，
你便與我
同在
這白色的
紙單上。

上個星期
在床單上
我捂住雙耳拒絕
你關於離別的話語——
不曾有這樣的話。
這是一場古老的爭吵：

樹倒於
林間
而無人
傾聽。
此刻我迷失在
那片森林。

翻譯 © 史春波

love letter

it has snowed
on this page
and there are tracks
as of a small
animal lost
in the white weather

in the cold battle
of breath
yours forms
the only cloud
on which I can rest
my head

情書

下雪了
在這張紙上
留下一行蹤跡
彷彿有隻小動物
在白色的天氣裏
迷了路

在呼吸的
冷戰中
你的
形成唯一的雲
我把頭
靠上去休憩

翻譯 © 史春波

TO A DAUGHTER LEAVING HOME

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

給將離家的女兒

妳八歲時
我教妳騎
自行車，伴妳
沿途慢跑，
看妳在兩個圓輪之上
搖晃著遠去，
我張圓了嘴
出於驚詫，當妳順著公園
彎曲的小徑
衝向前方，
我一直等待
妳摔倒時
那一聲悶響
繼而奮力追趕，
可妳越變
越小，距離越遠
妳越易碎，
蹬啊，蹬啊
朝向妳的生活
歡聲尖叫，頭髮
在妳身後拍打
好像一塊手帕
揮舞著
再見。

翻譯 © 史春波

AUTUMN

I want to mention
summer ending
without meaning the death
of somebody loved

or even the death
of the trees.
Today in the market
I heard a mother say

Look at the pumpkins,
it’s finally autumn!
And the child didn’t think
of the death of her mother

which is due before her own
but tasted the sound
of the words on her clumsy tongue:
pumpkin; autumn.

Let the eye enlarge
with all it beholds.
I want to celebrate
color, how one red leaf

flickers like a match
held to a dry branch,
and the whole world goes up
in orange and gold.

秋

我想說說
夏日的結束
又不影射死亡
某個被愛之人

甚至樹木
的死去。
今天在市場上
我聽見一位母親說

看那些南瓜啊，
秋天終於來了！
而孩子並沒有想到
注定在她之前的

母親的死，
只是品嘗著她笨拙舌尖上
詞語的聲響：
南瓜；秋天。

讓眼睛擴張吧
憑它注視的一切。
我要慶祝
顏色，一片紅葉如何

閃爍，像一根
伸向枯枝的火柴，
整個世界燃起
橙色和金黃。

翻譯 © 史春波

HOME FOR THANKSGIVING

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons’
as harsh
as the fathers’.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly—
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us.

回家過感恩節

團聚的一家人
在我們四周拋下影子，
這是一個家庭
的黃昏。

還有足夠的光
照亮來時的路，
而玻璃窗上
那光束正在消減。

很快我們將成為無物
只剩剪影：兒子們
同父親一樣
棱角分明。

很快，女兒們
將摘下圍裙
像冬天來臨時
樹木脫掉葉子。

讓我們快點吃吧——
讓我們把自己填滿。
在我們身後
相冊正慢慢合上。

翻譯 © 史春波

WIND CHILL

The door of winter
is frozen shut,

and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars

lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them.

How ceremonious snow is,
with what quiet severity

it turns even death to a formal
arrangement.

Alone at my window, I listen
to the wind,

to the small leaves clicking
in their coffins of ice.

風寒

冬之門
凍緊，

像早已滅絕的
動物的軀體，小汽車

被棄置在寒冷公路
可抵達的終點。

大雪多麼隆重，
它以這般寂靜的莊嚴

把死亡也變成一場
正式的佈景。

獨自在窗邊，我聽
風，

聽細小的樹葉
在它們冰制的棺材裏走動。

翻譯 © 史春波

WOMAN SEWING BESIDE A WINDOW

“Pure and simple observation is a
deed…”
                           Edward Vuillard

He captures light
by painting its slow
diminishment: the woman
leaning over her work,
mending the flower-dark day
stitch by gathering stitch
which she will finish soon,
and fold, and put away.

在窗邊縫紉的婦女

「純粹而簡單的觀察是一種
    行動……」
                      愛德華·維亞爾

他畫出光線
的消減，藉以把光
捕獲：一位婦女
正在弓身縫補
日子的幽暗之花，
一針擷起一針
她就要完成，
然後疊好，收起來。

翻譯 © 史春波

THE MYTH OF PERFECTABILITY

I hang the still life of flowers
by a window so it can receive
the morning light, as flowers must.
But sun will fade the paint,
so I move the picture to the exact center
of a dark wall, over the mantel
where it looks too much like a trophy—
one of those animal heads
but made up of blossoms.
I move it again to a little wall
down a hallway where I can come upon it
almost by chance, the way the Japanese
put a small window in an obscure place,
hoping that the sight of a particular landscape
will startle them with beauty as they pass
and not become familiar.
I do this all day long, moving
the picture or sometimes a chair or a vase
from place to place. Or else
I sit here at the typewriter,
putting in a comma to slow down
a long sentence, then taking it out,
then putting it back again
until I feel like a happy Sisyphus,
or like a good farmer who knows
that the body’s work is never over,
for the motions of plowing and planting continue
season after season, even in his sleep.

可臻完美的神話

我將那幅靜物花
掛在窗口，好讓它吸收
晨光的照耀，花朵必須如此。
但太陽會曬褪它的油彩，
於是我把它挪到一堵暗牆的
正中央，在壁爐上方
它太像一件戰利品——
一個什麼動物的頭顱
只不過用花紮成。
我又把它移到門廳裏
一面窄牆上，這樣我就能
碰巧經過它，好像日本人
在不起眼的地方開一扇小窗
以便窗外獨特的景致
會把過路人震撼
又保持一定陌生感。
一整天我都在為此忙碌，挪動
一幅畫，一張椅子或一樽花瓶
從一處到另一處。不然
就坐在這臺打字機前，
添一個逗號為長句子
減速，然後把它刪掉，
再放回去
直到自己成為一個快樂的西西弗斯，
或者一個好農民，懂得
肉體的勞作永無止境，
因為耕種的動作年復一年，
甚至在睡夢中延續。

翻譯 © 史春波

IN THE REALM OF PURE COLOR

after Gauguin’s The Loss of Virginity

It is our eyes that lose
their innocence, ravished by
these purples and greens as we gaze

at the woman lying there,
her ankles pressed together,
like Holbein’s Christ.

She is perfectly immobile,
as if the fox signifying lust
were hardly there, nor the bird

settled on her open hand.
Even the procession that winds
its slow way towards her

is simply a curve of darkness
in the distance. In this realm
of pure color it is the intense blues

of the water that matter,
the soft shapes of the rocks,
more voluptuous than any woman.

And she becomes a flat plane of white
in the foreground, the tropical color
of sand after the sea has receded.

在純色的國度

看高更畫作《失去童貞》

那失去清白的
是我們的眼睛，它們
被這些紫色和綠色洗劫，當我們凝視

那個平躺的少女，
她的兩隻腳踝壓在一起，
好像霍爾拜因的基督。

她純然靜止，
彷彿那隻象征情欲的狐狸
根本不存在，那隻小鳥也沒有

棲止在她松開的手上。
甚至那支向她緩緩吹來的
行進中的隊列

也不過遠處一條
幽暗的曲線。在這純色的
國度，海水熾烈的藍

最為緊要，
那些石頭柔和的線條，
比任何女人都刺激感官。

於是她成為前景中
一塊平坦的白，海水退卻之後
熱帶的沙灘。

翻譯 © 史春波

POSTERITY

For every newborn child
We planted one live tree,
A green posterity,
So death could be beguiled
To abdicate some power.
And we were reconciled.

Now we must move away
Leaving the trees behind
For anyone to climb.
The gold-rimmed sky goes gray.
Snow, as we turn our backs,
Obliterates our tracks.
Not even leaves can stay.

後裔

為每一位新生兒
我們栽下一棵活樹，
綠的後裔，
好讓樹根與花枝
哄騙死神
交出一些權力。
於是我們言歸於好。

現在我們必須騰挪
把樹留在身後
任人攀爬。
鑲金邊的天空開始變暗。
雪，在我們轉身的一瞬，
擦除我們的行跡。
一片樹葉不留。

翻譯 © 史春波

REMISSION

It seems you must grow
into your death slowly,
as if it were a pair of new shoes
waiting on the closet floor,
smelling of the animal
it came from, but still too big
too stiff for you to wear.
Meanwhile you dance barefoot
your shaky dance of pretence,
and we dance with you,
the pulses in our own wrists
ticking away.
In this small truce
the body waits,
having waged war on itself
for years. You say
the water tastes of flowers.
You steal on tiptoe
past the closet door.

好轉期

看來你必須慢慢
成長為死亡，
就像一雙新鞋
在壁櫥外的地板上等候，
聞起來有製成它的
動物味道，但是太大
太硬，穿不上。
此時你光著腳跳舞
虛弱的舞姿在假裝，
而我們與你同舞，
你腕上的脈搏
嘀嗒流逝。
這就是身體一直等待的
短暫休戰，
它對自己開戰
已有多年。你說
水嘗起來像花。
你踮起腳尖偷盜
繞過壁櫥門口。

翻譯 © 史春波

DUET FOR ONE VOICE

1.
I sit at your side
watching the tides of consciousness
move in and out, watching
the nurses, their caps
like so many white gulls circling
the bed. The window
grows slowly dark
and light again,
and dark. The clock
tells the same old stories.
Last week you said, now
you’ll have to learn
to sew for yourself.
If the thread is boredom,
the needle is grief.
I sit here learning.

2.
In place of spring
I offer this branch
of forsythia
whose yellow blossoms
I have forced.
You force a smile
in thanks. Outside
it is still cold;
who knows how long
the cold will last?
But underground,
their banners still furled,
whole armies of flowers wait.

3.
I am waiting for you to die,
even as I try to coax you
back to life
with custards and soup
and colored pills I shake
from the bottle like dice,
though their magic
went out of the world
with my surgeon father,
the last magician.
I am waiting
for you to be again
what you always were,
for you to be there whole
for me to run to with this new grief—
your death—the hair grown back
on your skull the way it used to be,
your widow’s peak the one sure landmark
on the map of my childhood,
those years when I believed
that medicine and love and being good
could save us all.

4.
We escape from our mothers
again and again, young
Houdinis, playing the usual matinees.
First comes escape down
the birth canal, our newly carved faces
leading the way like figureheads
on ancient slaveships,
our small hands rowing for life.
Later escape into silence, escape
behind slammed doors,
the flight into marriage.
I thought I was finally old enough
to sit with you, sharing a book.
But when I look up
from the page, you
have escaped from me.

獨聲二重唱

1.
我坐在妳身邊
觀看意識的潮水
起落，觀看
護士們，白帽
如一眾海鷗盤旋
於床上。窗戶
慢慢變暗，
然後點亮，
再變暗。鐘表
訴說相同的故事。
上個星期妳說，現在
妳必須學習
自己縫紉。
如果線令人厭倦，
針就是悲痛。
我坐在這裏借鑒。

2.
頂替春天
我獻上這枝
連翹，
它黃豔的花簇
我強使開放。
妳擠出一個微笑
表示感謝。外面
依然寒冷；
誰知道嚴寒
會持續多久？
而在地下，
它們旗幟蜷曲，
花的大軍在候命。

3.
我正等待妳死去，
儘管我試圖哄妳
回到生活
用蛋撻和湯羹
還有彩色的藥片彷彿
骰子在瓶中晃動，
儘管它們的魔力
已隨外科醫生父親，
那最後的魔術師
走出這個世界。
我正等待
妳再次成為
妳曾經所是，
完整地在那兒
好讓我帶著新的痛苦跑過去——
妳的死——頭髮向後生長
在妳的顱骨上一如既往，
妳寡婦的頂峰，我童年地圖上
可靠的地標，
那些年我曾相信
藥和愛和善良
可以挽救一切人。

4.
我們逃離母親
一次又一次，年輕的
胡迪尼，習慣了日間表演。
起先逃出
生產的運河，我們新鮮刻造的臉龐
像古老的奴隸船頭
領航的雕像，
小手劃呀劃向生命。
後來逃入寂靜，逃到
砰然關響的門後，
婚姻的試航。
我以為我年歲已夠
可與妳並坐，分享一本書。
但是當我從書頁間
抬起頭，妳已
從我逃遁。

翻譯 © 史春波