到底用什么留住你?我用什么才能留住你
到底用什么留住你?我用什么才能留住你the moon of the jagged suburbs.绝望的落日,I offer you lean streets我给你瘦落的街道,desperate sunsets
《英文诗两首》之一
博尔赫斯
What can I hold you with?
我用什么才能留住你?
I offer you lean streets
我给你瘦落的街道,
desperate sunsets
绝望的落日,
the moon of the jagged suburbs.
荒郊的月亮,
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
I offer you my ancestors my dead men
我给你我已死去的祖辈,
the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:
后人们用大理石祭奠的先魂,
my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires
我父亲的父亲阵亡于布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境,
two bullets through his lungs
两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛,
bearded and dead
死的时候蓄着胡子,
wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;
尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起。
my mother's grandfather
我母亲的祖父,
-just twentyfour-
那年才二十四岁,
heading a charge of three hundred men in Peru
在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋,
now ghosts on vanished horses.
如今都成了消失的马背上的亡魂。
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold.
我给你我的书中所能蕴含的一切悟力,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
以及我生活中所能有的男子气概和幽默,
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心,
that deals not in words traffics not with dreams
不营字造句,不和梦交易,
and is untouched by time by joy by adversities.
不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset years before you were born.
我给你早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
I offer you explanationsof yourself
我给你关于你生命的诠释,
theories about yourself
关于你自己的理论,
authentic and surprising news of yourself.
你的真实而惊人的存在。
I can give you my loneliness
我给你我的寂寞,
my darkness
我的黑暗,
the hunger of my heart;
我心的饥渴,
I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty with danger with defeat.
我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。