林木博客
深山不見林.
一
無用的黎明在荒涼的街角找到我；我已經活過這一夜。
黑夜是高傲的波浪：暗藍色高大的浪頭承載著形形色色極度的廢物，和求之不得的事物。
黑夜慣於神秘饋贈和拒絕，給一半留一半，和陰鬱的一半同樂。黑夜就是如此行事，我告訴你。
那個黑夜，浪湧留給我日常的瑣碎和殘留物：某些可憎也可交談的朋友，夢幻音樂，和苦澀灰燼冒出的煙。對我饑餓的心無用的東西。
大浪帶來了你。
言語，任何言語，你的笑聲；你那麽慵懶又持續的美。我們交談過但你已忘記說過的話。
破碎的黎明在我的城市一條荒涼的街道找到我。
你轉過的身影，使你成名的聲音，你輕快的笑聲：這些是你留給我的光亮的玩具。
在黎明我交出它們，我失去它們；我對幾隻流浪狗和幾顆流浪的晨星說起它們。
你隱秘豐富的人生…
我必須設法弄清你：我收起你留給我的光亮的玩具，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
我用什麽才能留住你？
我願給你瘦削的街道、絕望的落日、犬牙交錯的郊區的月亮。
我願給你一個久望孤月的男人的苦楚。
我願給你我的先輩，逝去的親人，生者用大理石祭奠的亡魂：在布宜諾斯艾利斯邊境陣亡的我父親的父親，兩顆子彈射穿他的肺，胡子拉碴，死了，被他的士兵用牛皮裹起；我母親的祖父——年僅二十四歲——在秘魯率領三百人衝鋒，如今成了消失的馬背上的幽靈。
我願給你我書中可能蘊含的一切洞見，我生活中不論什麽樣的男子氣魄或幽默。
我願給你一個從未忠誠過的男人的忠誠。
我願給你我不知怎麽就保全下來的自身的內核——那與語言無關（不以文字描述），沒有夢想（不與夢交易），未被時間，喜悅，逆境觸動過的核心。
我願給你在夕陽中看到的一朵黃玫瑰的記憶，遠在你出生之前。
我願給你對你自己的詮釋，有關你自己的論述，你自己真實而意想不到的消息。
我能給你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饑渴；我正盡力用不確定、危險、失敗賄賂你。
（林木譯）
TWO ENGLISH POEMS
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.
