得一忘二 译
查尔斯·赖特Charles Wright生于1935年，被认为是美国当代最重要的诗人之一，获得包括普里策和全美图书奖在内的许多奖项。
诗一首:仿李贺
万物都渴望失去重量，
渴望到达语言之外的地方，
抵达某种沉默、某个神恩地带，
天空有生丝的洁白，
在西天展开冷冷的镜子，
夕阳犹如枯死的草。
如果上帝像我们那样伤害他人，
他也会感到心酸，
郁郁寡欢，无以慰籍。
********
据传说，李贺往往每日破晓时
离家出游，骑一头毛驴，一个书童
跟随其后，
身上斜挎着
一只古破锦囊。
灵感来袭时，李贺便会写下
那些词句，投入锦囊之中。
待到夜晚归家，无论它们多么杂乱散碎，
他都要将词句补足成章。
他母亲曾怒曰：
“是儿要呕出心乃已耳！”
他确实就是这样。
就好像诗人济慈，
临死时仍然相信他的名字将永远不见经传。
他绝望地以为自己遭到最恶毒的诅咒，终生不幸。
二十七岁时，在他弥留之际，他看到一个绯衣人
驾着一头红色虬龙，
手持一块板牌，说道：
“我奉命来此召李贺上天。”
李贺从床榻上爬起，泣不成声。
病人卧房漆黑一片，远处有暴风雪穿过关隘，
猴子在柏树梢头窜来窜去
而愚笨的人还在吞食白玉。
**********
南山含悲、令人心碎，
它们的绝望皓如白头，
覆盖着唐代十二月忧伤的白纸。
字词还有什么意义——根本就没有词句
能够编纂出这十二月的寒冷、
能修订出我们的感受。
我们像浮云一样悬吊在天地之间，
在有无之间，
有时我们有影子相随，有时没有。
选自《黑色十二宫图》（1997年）
Poem Half in the Manner of Li Ho
All things aspire to weightlessness,
some place beyond the lip of language,
Some silence, some zone of grace,
Sky white as raw silk,
opening mirror cold-sprung in the west,
Sunset like dead grass.
If God hurt the way we hurt,
He, too, would heart-sore,
Disconsolate, unappeasable.
**********
Li Ho, the story goes, would leave home
Each day at dawn, rising a colt, a servant boy
walking behind him,
An antique tapestry bag
Strapped to his back.
When inspiration struck, Ho would write
The lines down and drop them in the bag.
At night he’s go home and work the lines up into a poem,
No matter how disconnected and loose-leafed they were.
His mother once said,
"He won’t stop until he has vomited out his heart."
And so he did.
Like John Keats,
He dies believing his name would never be written among the Characters.
Without hope, he thought himself—that worst curse—unlucky.
At twenty-seven, at death’s line, he saw a man come
In purple, driving a red dragon,
A tablet in one hand, who said,
"I’m here to summon Li Ho."
Ho got from his bed and wept.
Far from the sick room’s dragon-dark, snow stormed the passes,
Monkeys surfed the bo trees
and foolish men ate white jade.
***********
How mournful the southern hills are,
how white their despair
Under December’s T’ang blue blank page.
What’s the use of words—there are no words
For December’s chill redaction,
for the way it makes us feel.
We hang like clouds between heaven and earth,
between something and nothing,
Sometimes with shadows, sometimes without.
From Black Zodiac (1997)
黑色十二宫图
先哲们因时间而黯淡，如我们的记忆，龙蛇混杂、
龃龉失和，
终于偏安于我们的草坪，犹如空气
丝毫无心，犹如空气带着清澄的虚空。
对他们或记忆，我们能说什么？
为何这两者都会既幽暗而又澄明？
他们翻弄我们的头发，
他们翻弄八月的树叶，
然后遽然住手，一如清风。
苍蝇飞回了，热浪也如此——
我们能说什么？
除了天空，没有无边无垠的事物。
苍蝇飞回了，午后的时光
在其绿色的边缘步履蹒跚，
然后以其自身的静负载
偏安于我们的记忆之侧，偏安于贤哲长袍退色的下摆。
*********
追寻上帝者将哭喊出他们的赞美。
也许。也许不会——
尽管我们是尘埃与灰烬，
有人将会无言地离去，有人
将凭借他们的嘴一路聆听，
而痛苦使他们悬浮于地面之上一寸半的高度。
还有人则会咒骂，出于爱
出于深深的鄙夷。
仁慈的门户，犹如月蚀，阴暗了我们的下腹。
一排排墓碑粘着我们的步履，
八月的湿气
闪亮如光晕围绕我们的身体。
还有人将从牙缝中挤出一些字句，
带着恐惧，舌头打转，
嫌恶自己的衣服被玷污了肉体的斑痕。
这都是些幸运儿，免除了义务，名字被二度抹除。
***********
但丁和科里索斯托姆
也许能为这个下午找到一张恒星标注的地图，
朝觐之途……
你也有这种可能，
当这如钩的弦月还没有泛出黄疸的轮廓时，
当云朵划着双桨滑向天际，犹如叙述着
那仍未发生、但已在星星背后若隐若现、
所以势必发生的未来，
此时是1995年8月最后一天……
虫豸的来生、太空的涂鸦、风景上的
白色洞穴，
这些事物、这些通衢，都引向尘土，
它们处理起伤害也轻而易举。
天之蓝、蓝得无边无际，大地之上的
蓝色水域：
为何伟大的传说永远存在于过去？
**********
人生，未经审视与反复审察，
绝无任何差异——
无法回答的问题、琐碎的谈话、
不可证明的定理、搁置已久的争论——
你应将它们一一写下。
无论陆地景致还是水上风光、常青树上的光照面积、
或者黑夜里的庭外媾和，
你应将它们一一纪录。
记忆的手绢、死亡的梦与汽车、
上帝的沉睡，
你应将它们一一记述，
正午有一半属于空无、月亮只是半圆，
黑夜没有星星也没有自我、黑夜有黑色的血液与黑色的祈祷，
蜘蛛在灌木篱笆之间忙碌、
最后一声鸟鸣、
蟾蜍在潮湿的地方、树蛙在干燥的……
**************
我们走向坟墓，带着情感这身外之物、
二手的满足、朝三暮四、
星座图已被消磁。
我们身穿最标致的套装离去。鸟在飞。云在飘。
当然，我们冷冰冰的、不可触摸，
但是我们并无恶意。
没有牙齿会习惯于憎恶的餐叉，
我们身在别处，而肉味甘美。
书法家表现着无形体的对象、上帝照看着词语的病房、
我们会照亮什么字母令它们豁然开朗？
在我们上方，虚无的大气
不在任何地方，它开始招徕我们，等待我们回头拜访。
在我们上方，巨大的星群侧身潜行、战战兢兢，
一个个字母从黑暗中显露出来，呈现
你的前生、我的前世。
一个个字母退去黑暗，显露出来。
**********
记忆纠缠不到的人、温室的夜眠、
滑音与静寂的精灵，
无形之手啊，
你见证又继续前行。
诸神啊，你们前言不搭后语、细微的手势难以分辨，
请将我脱离此生、令我得救……
整个下午，雨一直像雨一样在我心中滂沱，
也瓢泼于果园与矮树林。
整个下午，
残夏的词汇表在大雨纷飞中
翻转着页码，
抽取不可或缺的字词。
秋天降临我们了。
雨水注满我们狭窄的床铺，
描述犹如空气与水，也是一个元素。
就这个词罢。
选自《黑色十二宫图》
Black Zodiac
Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix
And mismatch,
and settle about our lawn furniture, like air
Without a meaning, like air in its clear nothingness.
What can we say to either of them?
How can they be so dark and so clear at the same time?
They ruffle our hair,
they ruffle the leaves of the August trees,
Then stop, abruptly as wind.
The flies come back, and the heat—
what can we say to them?
Nothing is endless but the sky.
The flies come back, and the afternoon
Teeters a bit on its green edges,
then settles like dead weight
Next to our memories, and pale hems of the masters’ gown.
************
Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him.
Perhaps. And perhaps not—
dust and ashes though we are,
Some will go wordlessly, some
Will listen their way in with their mouths
Where pain puts them, an inch-and-a-half above the floor.
And some will revile him out of love
and deep disdain.
The gates of mercy, like an eclipse, darken our undersides.
Rows of gravestones stay our steps,
August humidity
Bright as auras around our bodies.
And some will utter the words,
speaking in fear and tongues,
Hating their garments splotched by the flesh.
These are the lucky ones, the shelved ones, the twice-erased.
***********
Dante and John Chrysostom
Might find this afternoon a sidereal roadmap,
A pilgrim’s way….
You might too
Under the prejaundiced outline of the quarter moon,
Clouds sculling downsky like a narrative for whatever comes,
What hasn’t happened to happen yet
Still lurking behind the stars,
31 August 1995…
The afterlife of insects, space graffiti, white holes
In the landscape,
such things, such avenues, lead to dust
And handle out hurt with ease.
Sky blue, blue of infinity, blue
waters above the earth:
Why do the great stories always exist in the past?
***********
The unexamined life’s no different from
the examined life—
Unanswerable questions, small talk,
Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments—
You’ve got to write it all down.
Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar
Of evening,
you’ve got to write it down.
Memory’s handkerchief, death’s dream and automobile,
God’s sleep,
you’ve still got to write it down,
Noon half-empty, moon half-full,
Night starless and egoless, night blood-black and prayer-black,
Spider at work between the hedges,
Last bird call,
toad in a damp place, tree frog in a dry….
*************
We go to our graves with secondary affections,
Secondhand satisfaction, half-souled,
star charts demagnetized.
We go in our best suits. The birds are flying. Clouds pass.
Sure we’re cold and untouchable,
but we harbor no ill will.
No tooth tuned to resentment’s fork,
we’re out of here, and sweet meat.
Calligraphers of the disembodied, God’s word-wards,
What letters will we illuminate?
Above us, the atmosphere,
The nothing that’s nowhere, signs on, and waits for our back and call.
Above us, the great constellations sidle and wince,
The letters undarken and come forth,
Your X and my X.
The letters undarken and they come forth.
*************
Eluders of memory, nocturnal sleep of the greenhouse,
Spirit of slides and silences,
Invisible Hand,
Witness and walk on.
Lords of the discontinuous, lords of the little gestures,
Succor my shift and save me….
All afternoon the rain has rained down in the mind,
And in the gardens and dwarf orchard.
All afternoon
The lexicon of later summer had turned its pages
Under the rain,
abstracting the necessary word.
Autumn’s upon us.
The rain fills our narrow beds,
Description’s an element, like air or water.
That’s the word.
From Black Zodiac (1997)
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