《拉古尼塔斯的冥想》 by 哈斯——

拉古尼塔斯的冥想

羅伯特·哈斯  林木譯

 

所有新的思考都關乎失去。

這一點，它與所有舊的思考如出一轍。

比如這樣的觀念：每一個具體之物都會抹去

一個普遍觀念發光的清晰性。那隻

小醜臉的啄木鳥啄著那棵死去的黑樺

雕塑般的樹幹，因為它的在場，

成就了從一個未分化之光的

最初世界中悲劇性墜落。或者另一種看法，

因為在這個世界上並不存在某一個事物

正好對應那叢糾纏的黑莓荊棘，

一個詞就是對它所指之物的挽歌。

昨夜很晚了我們談到這些，而在

我朋友的聲音裏，有一絲悲傷，一種

幾乎抱怨的語調。過了一會兒我才明白，

這樣談論下去，一切都會溶解：正義，

鬆樹，頭發，女人，你和我。曾有一個女人

我與她做過愛，我記得有時，當我

雙手握著她瘦小的肩膀，

我會對她的在場倍感驚奇，

像對鹽的渴望，對我童年的河的渴望，

河中有長著柳樹的小島，遊船上傳來傻氣的音樂，

泥濘的地方，我們在那裏捉過那種叫作

南瓜籽的橙銀色小魚。這幾乎與她無關。

我們說渴望，因為欲望充滿了

無盡的距離。我對她而言想必也是如此。

但我記得那麽多，她的手如何掰開麵包，

她父親說過傷害她的話，她

做過的夢。有些時刻身體與詞語一樣

充滿靈性，有些日子美好的肉身繼續存在。

如此溫柔，那些午後與傍晚，

說著黑莓，黑莓，黑莓。

 

Meditation at Lagunitas

By Robert Hass

 

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light. Or the other notion that,

because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

We talked about it late last night and in the voice

of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone

almost querulous. After a while I understood that,

talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,

pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman

I made love to and I remembered how, holding

her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,

I felt a violent wonder at her presence

like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river

with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,

muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish

called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.

Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.

But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,

the thing her father said that hurt her, what

she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.