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阿九/译
Derek Walcott: Sample poems
Translated from the English by Ajiu (2006)
For self study only. No part of this translation can be reproduced for commercial purposes.
一．新世界地图之一：群岛
这个句子的尽头，雨会开始飘下。
雨的边线上，是一张帆。
慢慢的，群岛自帆的视野消失；
一个种族对港口的信仰
也驶入了迷雾。
十年的仗打完了。
海伦的头发是一片乌云，
而特洛伊已是烟雨茫茫的海边
一只盛满白灰的火坑。
细雨渐密，像竖琴的丝弦。
一个目光阴沉的男子用手指扣住雨丝，
把《奥德赛》的第一行轻轻拨响。
阿九译
1. Map of the New World: I. Archipelagoes
At the end of this sentence, rain will begin.
At the rain’s edge, a sail.
Slowly the sail will lose sight of islands;
into a mist will go the belief in harbours
of an entire race.
The ten-years war is finished.
Helen’s hair, a grey cloud.
Troy, a white ashpit
by the drizzling sea.
The drizzle tightens like the strings of a harp.
A man with clouded eyes picks up the rain
and plucks the first line of the Odyssey.
From "Collected Poems, 1948-1984"
二．爱之后的爱
总有那么一天，
你会满心欢喜地
在你自己的门前，
自己的镜中，欢迎你的到来，
彼此微笑致意，
并且说：这儿请坐；请吃。
你会重新爱上这个曾经是你的陌生人。
给他酒喝，给他饭吃。把你的心
还给它自己，还给这个爱了你一生，
被你因别人而忽视
却一直用心记着你的陌生人。
把你的情书从架上拿下来，
还有那些照片、绝望的小纸条，
从镜中揭下你自己的影子。
坐下来。享用你的一生。
阿九译
2. Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
三．拳
紧握着我心脏的那只拳头
稍稍松开；我大口呼吸
这份明快轻松，但它又再次
握住。我何曾没有爱过
这爱的痛苦？但这次它超出了
爱而达到疯狂。它有着
疯子一样的钳握；这是在嚎叫着坠入
深渊前，死死扣住
非理性的悬崖。
心啊，就这样紧紧地扣住。
这样，至少你还能活着。
阿九译
3. The Fist
The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved
past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of
unreason before
plunging howling into the abyss.
Hold hard then, heart.
This way at least you live.
四．明天，明天
我记得那些我从未真切见过的
城市。有着银色静脉的威尼斯，带着
太妃般扭曲的塔尖的列宁格勒。巴黎。很快
印象派们会把阴影画成阳光。
哦！还有蛇环一样渐渐松开的海德拉巴的小巷
对爱过的人，天地就像荒岛；
它令人眼光蒙蔽，经验狭窄。
虽然精神快意，但心智却变得肮脏。
肉体在亵迹点点的衣被下浪费自己，
用杂志开阔着世界观。
门外有一个世界，但这多么让人心烦，
当你背着行囊站在冷冷的楼梯上
看黎明染红了砖墙，而在你开始后悔之前
你叫的出租车就带着一声笛响，
灵车一样缓缓停靠在你的路边，而你钻进车里。
阿九译
4. Tomorrow, Tomorrow
I remember the cities I have never seen
exactly. Silver-veined Venice, Leningrad
with its toffee-twisted minarets. Paris. Soon
the Impressionists will be making sunshine out of shade.
Oh! and the uncoiling cobra alleys of Hyderabad.
To have loved one horizon is insularity;
it blindfolds vision, it narrows experience.
The spirit is willing, but the mind is dirty.
The flesh wastes itself under crumb-sprinkled linens,
widening the Weltanschauung with magazines.
A world’s outside the door, but how upsetting
to stand by your bags on a cold step as dawn
roses the brickwork and before you start regretting,
your taxi’s coming with one beep of its horn,
sidling to the curb like a hearse -- so you get in.
五．自勉
我住在水上，
一个人，没有老婆孩子。
我仔细研究过每一种可能性，
到最后才发现：
在黑水边，有一座矮屋，
窗子永远开着，
面向陈旧的大海。我们不会去选择这样，
我们只是本来应该怎样，就是怎样。
我们历经苦难，年复一年，
我们卸得下货载，却卸不下自己
生命的重负。爱是一块石头，
栖在黑水下的
海床上。此刻，除了真情，
对诗歌我一无所求，
不要怜悯、名声、医治。沉默的妻子，
我们可以坐下来，看黯淡的海水，
并在洗尽了
一切平庸和废品的一生中
活得像一块石头。
我要忘却情感，
忘却自己的天赋。这比生命中经历的一切
都更伟大，更艰难。
阿九译
5. Winding Up
I live on the water,
alone. Without wife and children,
I have circled every possibility
to come to this:
a low house by grey water,
with windows always open
to the stale sea. We do not choose such things,
but we are what we have made.
We suffer, the years pass,
we shed freight but not our need
for encumbrances. Love is a stone
that settled on the sea-bed
under grey water. Now, I require nothing
from poetry but true feeling,
no pity, no fame, no healing. Silent wife,
we can sit watching grey water,
and in a life awash
with mediocrity and trash
live rock-like.
I shall unlearn feeling,
unlearn my gift. That is greater
and harder than what passes there for life.
六．死于大火的城市
那个煽情的布道者刚刚扫荡了一切，除了教堂上的天空，
我便在油灯下记述一个城市如何死于大火；
在蜡烛被烟熏得泪水充沛的目光下，我
想用比石蜡更多的话语，讲述铅丝一样崩断的信仰。
整整一天，我在乱石般的传说间走动，
街边的每一堵墙都像骗子一样让我吃惊；
被群鸟震撼的天空如此喧闹，所有的云都像
被劫的包裹，尽管是在火中，还那样白。
在基督走过的浓烟滚滚的海面上，我问，为什么
当他木质的世界不再管用时，人会哭得像一根蜡烛？
在城里，树叶是纸，而山丘是迭起的信仰；
对一个整日闲逛的男孩来说，每一片叶子都是一次绿色的
呼吸，把我以为早就僵冷了的爱重建一次，
祝福着死亡，还有这火的洗礼。
阿九译
6. A City’s Death by Fire
After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire;
Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.
七．真理
分享面包
就是分享生命，
但除了真理――
你只能在夜里到床上
听真理
在你的手心
一只儿时的钟面上
挣扎：这
冰冷的屋子
是一只翻了的小船，
而几面白墙
是打湿的帆……
阿九译
7. Truth
Sharing bread
is sharing life
but truth-
you ought to go to bed at night
to hear the truth
strike
on the childhood clock
in your arms: the
cold house
a turned-over boat,
the walls
wet canvases...
八．名声
名声就是：星期天，
巴尔蒂斯画中的
那种虚空。
是乱石堆砌的小巷，
但被日光照得灿烂无比，
是一堵墙，一座棕色的塔楼
在街道的末了，
是一朵没有铃铛的蓝铃花
像一张毫无生气的画布
固定在百色的
画框上，还有几朵花：
几朵剑兰，生硬的
剑兰，石质的花瓣
插在一根花瓶上。唱诗班
高上云霄的赞美诗
休止了音符。一册
自己翻开的
图版。还有高跟鞋
在行道上的嘀哒声。
一座爬行的钟。
一种对上班的渴望。
阿九译
8. Fame
This is Fame: Sundays,
an emptiness
as in Balthus,
cobbled alleys,
sunlit, aureate,
a wall, a brown tower
at the end of a street,
a blue without bells,
like a dead canvas
set in its white
frame, and flowers:
gladioli, lame
gladioli, stone petals
in a vase. The choir’s
sky-high praise
turned off. A book
of prints that turns
by itself. The ticktock
of high heels on a sidewalk.
A crawling clock.
A craving for work.
九．波兰骑手
侧影画中，青灰马“死神”驮着少年提多，
沿着寸寸燃烬的白昼走进黑森林；
目力不再的父亲心中的爱子
正像丢勒的骑士跨着罗辛南特战马；
但少年愉人的英姿无法掩饰马蹄的失步。
勇士转过身去，朝着父亲
再次投去确信而坚定的目光，
这匹继承来的驽马准确无误地
驰向充满象征的森林，它时刻呼唤着
猛龙扈从的骑士赶赴那里长眠。
但骑术在暗暗嘉许着骑手，
这青灰而面无血色的战马虽然早已通体僵绝，
却仍以不死的姿态托起自己的凶手，
它清澈的目光静待着下一时代的解读。
阿九译
2006-5-8
9. The Polish Rider
The grey horse, Death, in profile bears the young Titus
To dark woods by the dying coal of day;
The father with worn vision portrays the son
Like Dürer’s knight astride a Rosinante;
The horse disturbs more than the youth delights us.
The warrior turns his sure gaze for a second,
Assurance looks its father in the eye,
The inherited, bony hack heads accurately
Towards the symbolic forests that have beckoned
Such knights, squired by the scyther, where to lie.
But skill dispassionately praises the rider,
Despair details the grey, cadaverous steed,
The immortal image holds its murderer
In a clear gaze for the next age to read.
十．仲夏，多巴哥
宽阔的，太阳石的海滩。
白炽的热力。
碧蓝的河流。
一座小桥，
烤焦的棕榈的黄叶子
自夏日困倦的房屋边伸出，
整个八月都在瞌睡。
我所拥有的日子，
以及失去的日子，
日子就像女儿渐渐长大，
不再守着我的臂弯。
阿九译
10. Midsummer, Tobago
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.
十一．遗嘱附言
精神分裂，被两种风格拷打，
一种是雇佣文人帮闲的散文，我用它
来流亡。跋涉在月光下弯刀一样延伸数里的海滩，
我晒着月亮，让它烤着，
直到蜕去了
自爱这大海般的生命。
要改变你的语言，先得改变你的生命。
我无法纠正过去的错误。
浪花厌倦了天涯，自远方归来。
海鸥用生硬的舌头在搁浅的
渐渐腐烂的独木舟上方尖叫。
它们是夏洛特维尔的一片带有毒喙的云。
从前我以为，只要爱国就行，
但现在即使想这样，食槽里也没有我的位子。
我看到最聪明的人在腐朽成走狗，
仅仅为了一点残羹。
我已快到中年，
烤焦的皮肤
纸屑一样从手臂上脱落，薄得跟葱皮一样，
像皮尔·君特的谜语。
心里空无一物，甚至没有
对死的厌恶。我认识很多死者，
跟他们都很熟悉，性格也都相投，
连他们怎么死的我都了如指掌。当身上着火了，
肉体也就不怕地下的炉门，
不怕太阳留下的那个炼狱或者火坑了，
更不怕这个在云中出没的弯刀一样的月亮
把这片海滩烤成一页白纸。
它全部的冷漠不过是另一种狂怒。
阿九译
11. Codicil
Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,
one a hack’s hired prose, I earn
me exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,
tan, burn
to slough off
this live of ocean that’s self-love.
To change your language you must change your life.
I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues
Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.
Once I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.
I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of flavour.
I am nearing middle
age, burnt skin
peels from my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt’s riddle.
At heart there is nothing, not the dread
of death. I know too many dead.
They’re all familiar, all in character,
even how they died. On fire,
the flesh no longer fears that furnace mouth
of earth,
that kiln or ashpit of the sun,
nor this clouding, unclouding sickle moon
withering this beach again like a blank page.
All its indifference is a different rage.
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