一
無用的黎明在空寂的街角找到我；我比黑夜活得更久。
黑夜是高傲的波浪：頭重腳輕的深藍色波浪承載著各式各樣的廢物和不可能卻渴望的東西。
黑夜有這樣的習性：神秘的禮物和拒絕，東西給一半保留一半，帶著黑暗半球的歡樂。黑夜就是如此行事，我告訴你。
那個黑夜，湧動留給我習慣性的細線和奇特的端點：某些可憎也可交談的朋友，夢的音樂，和從令人不快的灰燼冒出的煙。對我饑餓的心而言毫無用處。
大浪帶來了你。
文字，任何文字，你的笑聲；你如此懶散又持續的美。我們說著但你欲說已忘言。
令人絕望的黎明在我的城市寂靜的街道找到我。
你的身影拒絕了構成你名字的聲音，你起伏的笑聲：這些是你留給我的有名的玩具。
在黎明我把它們交出去，我失去它們；我對幾隻野狗和幾顆流浪的晨星說到它們。
你黑暗而豐富的一生。
我必須設法弄清你：我收起你留給我的有名的玩具，我要看清你的真容，你真實的笑——你的鏡子知道的那個孤獨嘲諷的笑。
二
我能用什麽才能留住你？
我給你貧乏的街道、絕望的落日、荒郊的月亮。
我給你一個長久凝望孤月的人的悲苦。
我給你我的先輩，我死去的人，人們用青銅紀念的亡魂：在布宜諾斯艾利斯邊境陣亡的祖父，兩顆子彈射穿他的胸膛，死時蓄著胡子，士兵們用牛皮裹起他的屍體；我母親的祖父——時年二十四歲——在秘魯率領三百人衝鋒，如今成了消失的馬背上的幽靈。
我給你我書中蘊含的洞見，我生活中的男子氣概或幽默。
我給你一個從未忠誠過的人的忠誠。
我給你我設法保全的自己的內核，
不經營字句，不販賣夢想，未曾被時間、歡樂和困境影響過的心髒中心。
我給你在你出生前多年的一個傍晚看到的一朵黃玫瑰的記憶。
我讓你提供你的詮釋，關於你自己的理論，你真實而意外的消息。
我給你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心靈的饑渴；
我試圖用無常、危險、失敗賄賂你。
TWO ENGLISH POEMS
Por Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: dark blue top heavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.
2
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather -just twenty four- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
