Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


1916年复活节 

日暮时分我看见他们
带着活泼的神采，
从灰暗的十八世纪房子，
越过柜台、办公桌出来。
我走过去，点一点头，
说些无意义的客套，
或逗留一会，说几句
无意义的话，表示礼貌；
交谈未完，我已想到
讽刺故事或挖苦话，
好在俱乐部炉火一旁
逗朋友们乐一下。
我相信，他们和我一样，
不过在小丑之乡营生；
一切都变了，彻底变了：
一种可怖的美已经诞生。

那个女人大白天 
办事凭愚昧的好心肠，
到晚上则与人争辩
直到嗓门沙沙响；
当她年轻又漂亮，
追捕野兔骑着马，
没谁的嗓子赛过她。
这男子办了一所学校 
他骑着我们的天马 ，
那一位是他助手和朋友， 
他的部队他参加；
也许他最终把名望争到，
他天性善感多愁，
他思想大胆而美好。
另一个，我曾认为 
是个酒鬼，爱虚荣的蠢人，
他对我那位心爱者，
干过最痛心的恶行。
但我在歌中还要提到他，
他也从偶然的喜剧里，
把自己的角色辞掉， 
轮到他，他也变了样，
彻底改变了：
一种可怖的美已经诞生。

众心灵只怀一个目标，
经过一夏又一冬，
似乎中邪成岩石，
使活跃的河水不通。
从大路过来的马匹，
骑马者和从云霞
飞向云霞翻滚的鸟
一分一秒地变化；
落在河水中的云影
一分一秒地改变，
一只马蹄从水边滑落，
一匹马拍打于水间；
长脚母松鸡往下冲，
对着公松鸡啼鸣，
一分一秒地活着，
岩石居于一切的中心。

历时太久的牺牲，
能使心硬如岩石，
哦，何时牺牲算到头？
那要上帝来回答。
我们只能把人名轻唤，
如母亲叫唤孩儿名，
当睡眠终于来临，
使撒野的四肢安静。
难道这就是夜晚降临？
不，不，这不是夜而是死；
难道这不是多余的死？

英国也许会恪守信义，
不管她说过做过什么事。 
我们深知他们的梦想，
知道他们做过梦，已去世，
也就够了，兴许是过度的爱
使他们迷乱而致死？
我要在诗中写道——
麦克唐纳和麦克布拉德，
康诺利和皮尔斯，
今天和未来的日子，
凡悬挂绿色标帜之城， 
他们都变了，彻底变了：
一种可怖的美已经诞生。


Towards Break of Day

Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?

I thought: 'There is a waterfall
Upon Ben Bulben side
That all my childhood counted dear;
Were I to travel far and wide
I could not find a thing so dear.'
My memories had magnified
So many times childish delight.

I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water. I grew wild,
Even accusing Heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch.

I dreamed towards break of day,
The cold blown spray in my nostril.
But she that beside me lay
Had watched in bitterer sleep
The marvellous stag of Arthur,
That lofty white stag, leap
From mountain steep to steep.



天亮之隙

那躺在我边上的女人做的梦，
是我梦的重现，
还是我们各做一半梦
在白昼最初的冷光下面？

我想：“有一条瀑布
在本·布尔本山旁，
我小时最最喜爱；
要是我云游四面八方，
也找不到这么可爱的东西。”
我的记忆已放大了好多倍，
我童年时代的乐趣。

我想像个孩子摸摸它，
但我知道我的手只能摸到
冰冷的石头和水。我火了，
甚至责骂老天，因它
定下了律令一条：
我们爱得太深的东西，
没一样可以摸到。

天亮之际我梦见
鼻孔中冰凉的黄水沫，
在我旁边躺着的她
却在更痛苦的睡眠中，
看着亚瑟了不起的牡鹿， 
那只高大的白牡鹿，
从山坡向山坡跳跃。



The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



基督重临 

在向外扩张的旋锥体上旋转呀旋转， 
猎鹰再也听不见主人的呼唤， 
一切都四散了，再也保不住中心，
世界上到处弥漫着一片混乱，
血色迷糊的潮流奔腾汹涌，
到处把纯真的礼仪淹没其中， 
优秀的人们信心尽失，
坏蛋们则充满了炽烈的狂热。

无疑神的启示就要显灵，
无疑基督就将重临。
基督重临！这几个字还未出口，
刺眼的是从大记忆来的巨兽： 
荒漠中，人首狮身的形体，
如太阳漠然而无情地相视，
慢慢挪动腿，它的四周一圈圈，
沙漠上愤怒的鸟群阴影飞旋。

黑暗又下降了，如今我明白
二十个世纪的沉沉昏睡，
在转动的摇篮里做起了恼人的噩梦，
何种狂兽，终于等到了时辰，
懒洋洋地倒向圣地来投生？



A Prayer for my Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.



为吾女祈祷 

又一次风在怒吼，半隐
摇篮篷顶下，床单盖上身，
我孩子睡着。没别的阻拦，
除了格雷戈里的树林，一座秃山，
能把这大西洋的狂风阻止；
它吹翻草垛，掀掉屋顶，
因为我心头有密密愁云，
我边走边祷告，有一个小时。

有一个小时，我边走边祈祷，
我听见海风在塔楼上呼叫，
风在桥的拱洞下长嚎，
在汹涌河水上的榆树间哀号；
激动人心的梦幻里我想到
未来的年代已经来临，
出自大海的凶恶的纯真，
它伴着疯狂的鼓点舞蹈。

但愿她长得俊，但不要那么美。
陌生人一见就目迷心醉，
或望着明镜，由于这原因，
由于长得太美太俊，
以为有美貌就一切足够，
从此失去慈爱的天性
和流露真心的亲切之情，
选不准，永远交不上朋友。

海伦被选中，感人生平庸，
后来又为一傻瓜受苦痛， 
那伟大的女王，从海中跃出，
生来没父亲，她随心所欲，
却挑了跛脚铁匠做男人。 
没问题，漂亮女子吃肉，
总得有可怕的沙拉拌着，
丰饶角由此断送个干净。 

我主要祝愿她深明礼仪； 
那些并非美得很的妇女
赢得人的心，不靠人恩赐，
许多人为了美做尽蠢事，
终于使俊美变成智慧相；
许多可怜虫东游西荡，
爱上人，又以为自己被爱上，
眼睛总离不开好心肠姑娘。

愿她像一棵盛开的隐蔽树 
像红雀一般是她的思路，
别的不做，只管向四周
播送宏亮美妙的歌喉；
只是为高兴才东赶西追，
只是为高兴才和人拌嘴；
噢，愿她活着像翠桂，
在可爱的地方植根永栽。

因为我爱过的那种头脑，
我赞赏过的那种美貌，
只略见繁荣，如今我心枯死；
我知道，心中充塞了仇视
可能是恶运的主要原因，
如没有什么郁愤积胸，
不管风雨怎么打，怎么攻，
红雀都不会离开枝头。

理性的仇恨是最坏的一种，
要让她明白偏见最可憎。
难道我没见到最可爱的女人，
从丰饶角的口中出生，
因为她偏见存在胸中，
把丰饶角和种种德性
——天性安分者都承认——
换来了老风箱，怒吹狂风。 
想到一旦把仇恨除尽，
心灵就恢复绝对的纯真，
最后省悟须自我欢娱，
自我惊惧，自我安抚，
自己的好心即上天的好心，
即使风箱尽裂，人人皱眉，
四面八方狂风怒吹，
我女儿还会觉得高兴。

祝愿她新郎带她到家里，
一切都合乎习俗、礼仪；
这些货色，狂傲和怨仇
都只在大街广场出售；
纯真和美岂不靠寄生
于习俗和礼仪而蔚然长成？
礼仪乃丰饶角的好名称，
习俗乃繁茂桂树的美名。



Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.



驶向拜占庭 

1

那地方可不是老年人待的。青年人
互相拥抱着，树上的鸟类
——那些垂死的世代——在歌吟，
有鲑鱼的瀑布，有鲭鱼的大海，
鱼肉禽整个夏天都赞扬个不停
一切被养育、降生和死亡者。
他们都迷恋于种种肉感的音乐，
忽视了不朽的理性的杰作。

2

一个老年人不过是卑微的物品，
披在一根拐杖上的破衣裳，
除非他那颗心灵拍手来歌吟，
为人世衣衫的破烂而大唱； 
世界上没什么音乐院校不诵吟
自己辉煌的里程碑作品，
因此我驶过汪洋和大海万顷，
来到了这一个圣城拜占庭。

3

啊，上帝圣火中站立的圣徒们，
如墙上金色的镶嵌砖所显示， 
请走出圣火来，参加那旋锥体的运行，
成为教我灵魂歌唱的老师。
销毁掉我的心，它执迷于六欲七情，
捆绑在垂死的动物身上而不知
它自己的本性；请求你把我收进
那永恒不朽的手工艺精品。 

4

一旦我超脱了自然，我再也不要
从任何自然物取得体形，
而是要古希腊时代金匠所铸造
镀金或锻金那样的体形，
使那个昏昏欲睡的皇帝清醒；
或把我放在那金枝上唱吟， 
歌唱那过去和未来或者当今，
唱给拜占庭的老爷太太听。



The Tower

I

What shall I do with this absurdity—
O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
        Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible—
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
Can be content with argument and deal
In abstract things; or be derided by
A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

II

I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day's declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.

Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once
When every silver candlestick or sconce
Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine,
A serving-man, that could divine
That most respected lady's every wish,
Ran and with the garden shears
Clipped an insolent farmer's ears
And brought them in a little covered dish.

Some few remembered still when I was young
A peasant girl commended by a song,
Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,
And praised the colour of her face,
And had the greater joy in praising her,
Remembering that, if walked she there,
Farmers jostled at the fair
So great a glory did the song confer.

And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,
Or else by toasting her a score of times,
Rose from the table and declared it right
To test their fancy by their sight;
But they mistook the brightness of the moon
For the prosaic light of day—
Music had driven their wits astray—
And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.

Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;
Yet, now I have considered it, I find
That nothing strange; the tragedy began
With Homer that was a blind man,
And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.
O may the moon and sunlight seem
One inextricable beam,
For if I triumph I must make men mad.

And I myself created Hanrahan
And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn
From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.
Caught by an old man's juggleries
He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro
And had but broken knees for hire
And horrible splendour of desire;
I thought it all out twenty years ago:

Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;
And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on
He so bewitched the cards under his thumb
That all but the one card became
A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,
And that he changed into a hare.
Hanrahan rose in frenzy there
And followed up those baying creatures towards—

O towards I have forgotten what-enough!
I must recall a man that neither love
Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear
Could, he was so harried, cheer;
A figure that has grown so fabulous
There's not a neighbour left to say
When he finished his dog's day:
An ancient bankrupt master of this house.

Before that ruin came, for centuries,
Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,
And certain men-at-arms there were
Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,
Come with loud cry and panting breast
To break upon a sleeper's rest
While their great wooden dice beat on the board.

As I would question all, come all who can;
Come old, necessitous, half-mounted man;
And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;
The red man the juggler sent
Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French,
Gifted with so fine an ear;
The man drowned in a bog's mire,
When mocking Muses chose the country wench.

Did all old men and women, rich and poor,
Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,
Whether in public or in secret rage
As I do now against old age?
But I have found an answer in those eyes
That are impatient to be gone;
Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,
For I need all his mighty memories.

Old lecher with a love on every wind,
Bring up out of that deep considering mind
All that you have discovered in the grave,
For it is certain that you have
Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing
Plunge, lured by a softening eye,
Or by a touch or a sigh,
Into the labyrinth of another's being;

Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
If on the lost, admit you turned aside
From a great labyrinth out of pride,
Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought
Or anything called conscience once;
And that if memory recur, the sun's
Under eclipse and the day blotted out.

III

It is time that I wrote my will;
I choose upstanding men
That climb the streams until
The fountain leap, and at dawn
Drop their cast at the side
Of dripping stone; I declare
They shall inherit my pride,
The pride of people that were
Bound neither to Cause nor to State,
Neither to slaves that were spat on,
Nor to the tyrants that spat,
The people of Burke and of Grattan
That gave, though free to refuse—
Pride, like that of the morn,
When the headlong light is loose,
Or that of the fabulous horn,
Or that of the sudden shower
When all streams are dry,
Or that of the hour
When the swan must fix his eye
Upon a fading gleam,
Float out upon a long
Last reach of glittering stream

And there sing his last song.
And I declare my faith:
I mock Plotinus' thought
And cry in Plato's teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar paradise.
I have prepared my peace
With learned Italian things
And the proud stones of Greece,
Poet's imaginings
And memories of love,
Memories of the words of women
All those things whereof
Man makes a superhuman
Mirror-resembling dream.

As at the loophole there
The daws chatter and scream,
And drop twigs layer upon layer.
When they have mounted up,
The mother bird will rest
On their hollow top,
And so warm her wild nest.

I leave both faith and pride
To young upstanding men
Climbing the mountain-side,
That under bursting dawn
They may drop a fly;
Being of that metal made
Till it was broken by
This sedentary trade.

Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come—
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath—
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades;
Or a bird's sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades. 



塔楼

1

我要这荒谬之物做什么——
心呵，苦恼的心呵——这幅漫画
衰老之年挂在我身上
如同挂在一只狗的尾巴上？
我从未有过
更为兴奋、激情、奇异的想象，
也没有耳目
更企盼着不可能的事物——
不，就在少年时也不，那时我带着钓竿和苍蝇
或更卑微的虫子，我上本·布尔本后山
去度过悠悠长日的夏天。
看来，我必须让缪思打点行装了， 
选择柏拉图和普洛提诺斯为友， 
直到想象力、耳朵和眼睛
满足于论证和处理
抽象观念，或被脚后
一个损坏了的水壶所嘲弄。

2

我在雉堞上漫步，注视
房子的地基，或是一棵树，
像熏黑的指头从地面崛起；
我派出想象
在白昼渐暗的光线下，
从废墟或古老的树丛
召回记忆和意象，
因为我要问他们全体一个问题。

在那个山脊的后面住着个法兰契太太，
有一次当所有银烛台或灯台
照亮黑黝黝的红木桌或酒，
一个侍者他能测知
那位最被尊敬的夫人的任何愿望，
他跑出去，用修枝剪刀
剪下一个傲慢农民的双耳，
装在一个盖好了的小碟里送来。

有些人还记得我年轻时，
有支歌称道一个农家姑娘，
她住在那多石头的地方，
称赞她鲜艳的脸庞，
我越赞美，越是高兴，
记得起，她一来到，
赶集的农民就你挤我推，
那支歌给了她那么大荣耀。

有些人听这歌发了疯，
或再三再四地为她干杯，
从桌旁站起，直接宣称
要亲眼证明这个幻想；
但他们把月色的光辉
误作白昼无味的光亮，
音乐迷了他们的心神——
有一个在克罗恒的大沼泽里丧命。

奇怪，作这歌的是个盲人；
但现在，我考虑了一番，觉得
没什么奇怪，悲剧一开始，
荷马就是个瞎子，
海伦背叛了所有活人的心。
噢，但愿月亮和太阳光
看来是不可分拆的光，
如我成功了，必使人们发狂。

我自己创造了罕拉汉， 
黎明中把他，醉或醒
从临近的某处村庄中赶过。
为一个老者的魔法着了迷，
他跌倒，翻滚，摸索着来去，
只剩下破膝头可以出工
和欲望的可怕的壮丽，
二十年前我构想出这一切：

好朋友们在旧场院里玩牌；
轮到那古代的老无赖发牌，
他指头下的牌做得这么怪，
所有的牌除了一张以外，
变成了一群猎犬，而不是一束牌，
他自己变成了野兔子。
罕拉汉一生气站起来，
就去追赶那些呼叫而去的狗子到——

噢，到我忘了的什么地方——够了！
我必须回想起一个人，
他是这样困厄，爱情、音乐
或剪下敌人的耳朵都不能使他快乐；
这样一个传奇式的人物
没留下一个邻居来说，
何时他过完他的狗日子；
他是这房子破产的老主人。

在它成为废墟以前，多少世纪，
带枪的粗人，绑腿齐膝，
脚穿铁靴，爬上狭小的楼梯，
那里有些持枪者来了，
他们的意象保存于大记忆， 
大声叫着，胸部喘息，
用大木棒子敲打桌子，
打破睡眠者的安息。

我想问问大家，能来的都来吧；
来吧，贫困的，登上一半楼梯的人，
带来歌颂美人的盲目的闲游者，
被魔术家赶出，上帝遗弃的
草原的红种人，获得如此
优美耳朵的法兰契太太，
那个在沼泽地淹死的人，
他嘲弄缪思，选择了村姑。

所有这些男人女人，穷人富人，
他们踏过这些山石或经过这座门，
不管在公众面前或内心，
都像我现在那样怒斥老龄？
但我从那些急于离去的人们
眼里得到了一个回答：
那么，去吧，但留下罕拉汉，
因我需要他全部强大的记忆。

四面八方都有爱人的老色鬼，
从深思熟虑的心中倒出来
你在坟墓中的全部发现，
因为你肯定已计量过每一个
对别个生命迷宫的投入，
它们不可预知，不可见，
为一个温柔的目光，
一个抚摸或叹息所迷惑。

想象最执着于
一个赢得的女人或失去的女人？
如是失去的，承认你离开了
一个伟大的迷宫，出于骄傲，
怯懦、愚蠢的过分精明的思想；
或者人们一度所谓的良心；
如果记忆复归，太阳
就会消失，白昼就会泯灭。

3

这是立遗嘱的时候了，
我喜欢正直的人们，
他们逆流勇进一直到
急流喷涌，黎明时分
在滴水崖旁投下钓饵；
我宣告，他们将继承我的豪气：
不受事业或国的管束，
不做啐人的暴君的奴隶，
也不向被啐的奴隶屈服；
我们是勃克、格拉丹的子民， 
有权拒绝，却还是施舍
豪迈如朝阳初醒，
光芒劈头盖脑而来；
豪迈如神奇的丰饶角一般，
或突如其来的阵雨，
当大河小溪全枯干；
或如天鹅它必须
眼盯着隐退的光芒，
在最后一长段溪水上，
那溪流还在闪光，

它浮游，把终曲歌唱。
我把信仰宣告：
我蔑视普洛提诺斯， 
我针对柏拉图狂叫，
人生无所谓生与死，
除非人成为整体，
从人的痛苦心灵
把种种连在一起，
对，还有日月星辰。
还得加上一点，
死后我们腾身向上，
做梦，并且创建
横穿月球的天堂。
我心安理得，
有讲究的意大利工艺，
有珍贵的希腊雕刻，
有诗人的幻想梦呓，
有爱情的种种回忆，
有女人们话语的回音，
依靠这一切东西，
人成为一个超人，
镜子般真实的梦境。

就像在透光孔旁，
穴鸟唧唧喳喳叫，
把枝叶层层投放，
等枝条铺得高高，
母鸟就飞到树端，
栖息于高悬的空巢
使它的野窝温暖。

我把信心和自豪
留给正直的年轻人，
他们攀登山腰
在黎明破晓时分
放下蝇饵钓鱼；
既是那钢材所造，
他们将坚持下去
直到这不动的行业 
最终使它破灭。

如今我把灵魂铸造，
强迫它去学习，
进一个渊博的学校
直到体力衰竭，
筋血慢慢衰退，
变得疯狂或暴躁，
或老朽痴呆，
或最坏的坏事来到——
朋友亡故，所有
俊眼丽目消失，
它们曾使我屏息——
都不过像天上流云
随着地平线隐去，
或像暗下去的阴影，
小鸟的一声倦啼。



Meditations in Time of Civil War

I

Ancestral Houses
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.

Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play,
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.

O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?

What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?

II

My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;

A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.

Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwindling score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.

III

My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous,
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
The soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk,
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.

IV

My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.

And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless ruin that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.

The Primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.

V

The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.

A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.

I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream,
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

VI

The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

VII

I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east. A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.

'Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
'Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.

Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.

The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks. Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon.

I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.



内战时期的沉思 

Ⅰ

祖先的住宅
当然在一个富人百花盛开的草地上，
在他山丘树林的瑟缩声中，
生命洋溢着，不带巨大的痛苦；
生命雨般流下直到基地满溢，
下得越多，跳到更眩目的高度
似乎任何形状由它自主选，
从不屈就一种机械的
或奴役的形式，听别人呼唤。

梦想而已，梦想而已！但荷马
如不曾发现梦之外有真实——
丰沛闪亮的喷泉来自生命的自娱，
他就不会歌唱，虽然如今奇妙的空贝壳
从丰盈溪流而非泉水的幽暗中
迸出，成为掩盖
富人继承光荣的象征。

有些暴烈而痛苦的人，有权势的人
请来了建筑家和艺术师，使他们
痛苦而暴烈的人能在石头上培育出
众人昼夜渴望的优美形象
和谁也没听说过的温柔品性；
但主子一埋掉，老鼠便可嬉戏，
也许那所房子的曾孙，
不管其中遍陈铜铸石雕，也不过是只鼠。

啊，如果孔雀用她纤巧的脚爪，
在花园的古老台地上踏步，
如朱诺在神情淡漠的花园诸神面前， 
把一尊瓷瓦的一切展现，
啊，如平坦的草地，铺石的道路，
一个人穿着拖鞋悠然沉思，
儿童从每种感官得到乐趣，
不过是用暴力夺去我们的伟大，又如何？

如果这些雕饰的门扉的光荣，
那些更高傲时代设计的建筑，
有人在巨室长廊的光滑地板上漫步
两边是我们祖先的著名画像，
如果人类中的最伟大者
认为这些东西最应发扬光大或祝福，
不过是用痛苦夺去我们的伟大，又如何？

Ⅱ

我的房子
一条古桥，一座更古老的塔楼，
一所农舍，为墙荫盖，
一亩石头地，
在那儿，象征性的玫瑰会开花，
粗厉的老榆树，数不尽的老荆棘，
雨声或者四面
刮来的各种风声；
昂首挺立的水鸡，
为一群牛的溅水声所吓，
又一次跨过小溪；

一个盘旋的楼梯，一间石拱顶的房子，
一个炉膛敞开的灰石炉，
一支蜡烛和一页文稿，
《沉思的人》中柏拉图主义者， 
在类似的房间中劳作，
投影出恶魔式的狂暴
如何想象一切。
从市场或集市
夜归的游客们
曾目睹他午夜的烛光。

有两个人在这里待过。一个持枪者
聚集了二十匹马，在这动乱之地
过他的日子，
长期的战争和突然的夜袭，
他减少的马匹，使他成了被逐者，
忘了别人，也被别人忘记；
而我，在我身后，
我肉体的继承人会发现，
我歌颂一个孤独心灵，
是一个苦难的合适表征。

Ⅲ

我的桌子
两个沉重的支架和一块木板，
上面放着佐藤的礼物，一把不变的剑， 
笔和纸在旁边
使我警惕
不要虚度岁月。
有一小件绣过的外套，
套住了它的木鞘。
它铸就时乔叟尚未出生。 
在佐藤家中，
它弯如新月，月般明亮，
躺了五百年。
但如没有变化出现，
就没有月亮，只有一颗痛楚的心
酝酿一件不变的艺术品。
我们的学者强调
何时何地它被铸造，
一个了不起的成就，
在绘画或陶器中出现，
就会像不变的剑
由父传子代代相传
经过许多个世纪。
灵魂之美最受崇拜，
人们和他们的业绩
呈现心灵不变的容貌；
最富有的传人知道
爱粗劣艺术的人
谁也过不了天堂之门，
他有一颗痛楚的心
虽然全国人称颂
他的丝衣和高贵步容，
他的神志清醒：
好像朱诺的孔雀尖鸣。 

Ⅳ

我的后代
从祖先承接了一个活跃的头脑，
我必须培育许多的幻想，
在身后留下一男一女， 
也同样头脑活跃，但生命
很少给风送去芳香，
很少使晨光照耀万丈，
而是满园充塞落下的花瓣，
随后不过是平凡的青草一片。

怎么办，如我后代丧失了花朵，
由于天生的衰落的心灵，
过多的瞬间即逝的俗务，
过多的玩乐，或与蠢人结婚？
愿这累人的楼梯，这黑暗的塔楼，
成为无顶的废墟，让猫头鹰
在破裂的墙垣间筑巢，
为她的孤寂向孤寂的天空哀号。

那个缔造我们的原动天， 
它使猫头鹰成圈飞行，
而我，自以为最成功，
既然有了足够的友谊爱情，
选了这住宅是为了老邻居的情谊，
装修改建是为了一个女子的爱情，
我知道不管将来兴盛或败衰，
这些石头仍是他们和我的纪念碑。

Ⅴ

我门边的路
一个和善的非正规军，
胖胖的福尔斯塔夫人物， 
走过来，讲着内战的笑容，
好像，给枪弹打死
是太阳下最好玩的事。

黑棕色的中尉和兵士
半身穿着国军制服，
站在我门口，我抱怨
坏天气、霰和雨，
梨树根被风暴打断。

我计算那些有羽毛的黑煤球，
溪中漫游的赤松鸡
以平息我心中的妒嫉；
转身走向卧室，卷入
一场梦的冰天雪地。

Ⅵ

我窗边的燕八哥巢 
蜂群在松散的墙垣空隙
筑巢，那里母鸟们
弄来虫子和枝条。
我的墙松散了，蜜蜂们
来燕八哥的空屋筑巢吧。

我们给关在里面，
钥匙何时转，我们不知道，
什么地方人被杀，房被烧，
无清楚事实可以知晓；
来燕八哥的空屋筑巢吧。

一道石头或木头的路障，
十四天左右的内战，
昨夜他们推着车运来
一个青年士兵血迹斑斑；
来燕八哥的空屋筑巢吧。

我们的心为狂想哺养，
这种食粮使心残暴，
我们仇恨的质量
超过了我们的爱；蜜蜂啊，
来燕八哥的空屋筑巢吧。

Ⅶ

我看见仇恨的幻影，
内心充实和未来空虚的幻影 
我爬上塔顶，倚靠着破碎的石头，
一阵雾像灰暗的雪正横扫一切，
月光下的山，河，榆树，
月亮不像它自己，像是不可改变的
从东方伸出的闪亮的剑，一阵风
把雾的又白又亮的碎片吹过去。
狂想惊心，奇思迷魂，
古怪熟悉的意象涌到心灵的眼前。

“向谋杀者报仇！”呼声起来了，
“为雅克·莫雷报仇！”身穿白衣或白纱， 
被狂怒驱策、折磨、刺激的群众，
群众攻打群众，咬手臂和脸，
扑向虚无，臂和指到处横伸，
拥抱虚无，而我神昏志迷，
因为这些无聊的动乱，也几乎大叫：
为杀害雅克·莫雷者复仇。

他们的腿修长纤细，眼睛蔚蓝，
神奇的独角兽背上驮着姑娘，
姑娘们合上沉思的眼。没有预言，
从巴比伦历史中回想起来的，
已使她们合上眼，她们的心灵不过是
池子，在那里渴望因过重而淹死。
寂静外什么也留不住，当心灵
充满本身的温柔，肉体充满自己的健美。

淡白色的独角兽，蔚蓝的眼睛，
颤动的半闭的眼睑，云或纱的残片，
因狂怒而发亮的眼睛，而变瘦的臂膀，
让位给不关心的群众，让位给
凶恶的鹰。不是自得其乐的幻想，
不是对未来的仇恨、对过去的怜悯，
只有爪子的紧抓、眼中的自满，
无尽铿锵的翅膀声遮住了月亮。

我转过身关上门，楼梯上我怀疑
多少次在别人都了解或分担的事中
我可能证明我的价值；
可是，雄心啊，如这种证明
吸引了一批朋友，一颗自在的良心，
它只会给我们添懊恼。抽象的欢乐，
魔鬼形象的半谙的智慧，
可以满足老人就像过去满足过成长的小孩。



Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
          Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?



丽达和天鹅 

猛然一击，那摇晃的女子身上
巨翅仍在拍打，黑羽压上
她的大腿，他的喙咬住她脐心
他用胸顶住她无助的乳房。

这些受惊的无措的指头怎能
从她松开的大腿推走茂盛的羽毛？
那肉体，躺在一片洁白中
怎能不感到奇异心脏的搏跳？

腰股间的一阵颤栗带来
墙坍，房顶和塔楼燃烧，
阿伽门农死了。 
   如此被抓获，
被空中飞来的野种所制伏？
在无情的喙放开她之前
她是否从他的力量获得了知识？



Among School Children

I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire. a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy—
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

IV

Her present image floats into the mind—
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

V

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

VI

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

VII

Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;

VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?



在学童中间

1

我走过漫长的教室，问东问西，
戴白头巾的好心老修女来答问：
儿童要学习唱歌和书写的技艺，
还要学历史和各种的读本，
要学习剪裁和缝纫，一切要整齐，
最摩登的样式——孩子们的眼神
出于那一时的好奇，目不转睛
注视这六十岁微笑的名人。

2

我梦见有一个丽达那样的身子， 
俯伏在快要熄灭的炉子上，
让一个挨臭骂或者无聊的故事，
使童年的一天变成了忧伤——
仿佛为年轻人那种同情所驱使，
我们的两颗心交融成一颗，
或者改一下柏拉图的那一个比方， 
化成了蛋壳中的蛋白和蛋黄。

3

想起了那一阵我们的悲伤和气愤，
我瞧瞧这孩子，望望那儿童，
猜想她当年可也是那一副神情，
有那种颜色的头发和脸容——
因为即使是天鹅的女儿也有份， 
每一个摇摆而行者的习性。
这时刻我的心灵狂乱地跳动：
她就在我眼前，一个活儿童。

4

她目前的形象飘进了我的心中，
是十五世纪艺术家的造型，
她两颊深陷好似吸着一股风，
把一堆阴影当作了食品？ 
虽说我从不是丽达那样的品种，
也有过美丽的羽毛——算了吧，
还不如对所有微笑的人们微笑，
显示出老稻草人也过得很好。

5

哪一个年轻的母亲膝上抱个人，
他就是生殖之蜜的产品， 
他必须睡呀，叫呀，挣扎着求存，
按照那记忆或药物的决定； 
她要是看到堆积在那人的头顶，
六十个或更多个冬天的白雪，
会不会感到她儿子如今已报偿
生他的痛苦和前途的渺茫？

6

柏拉图认为自然不过是泡沫，
在事物的幽灵般的变幻图中嬉戏， 
亚里士多德更实际，拿起了鞭子，
抽打那王者之王的下体， 
全球闻名的长着金股骨的毕达哥拉斯，
用手指拉动提琴弓、弦乐器，
奏出星之歌，被无心的诗神听到： 
老拐杖披着破衣裳吓唬小鸟。 

7

修女们，母亲们，她们都崇拜形象，
但烛光照亮的形象并不能
激发起一个母亲的奇思和狂想，
而只使大理石像或铜像安生。
但它们也叫人心碎——种种形象，
为爱情、虔诚和母爱所熟知。
还有为一切至上的光荣所象征——
啊，对人类自身的嘲弄。 

8

劳作也就是开花或者舞蹈， 
躯体不为讨好灵魂而受害，
美丽也不是自我绝望所制造，
夜读不产生两眼模糊的智慧。 
栗树啊，树根粗壮的花朵开放着，
你就是叶子，花朵，或树身？
随乐曲晃动的躯体，明亮的眼神，
怎叫人把舞者和舞蹈分清？ 



A Man Young and Old

I

First Love
Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.

But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.

She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought
Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
When the moon sails out.

II

Human Dignity
Like the moon her kindness is,
If kindness I may call
What has no comprehension in't,
But is the same for all
As though my sorrow were a scene
Upon a painted wall.

So like a bit of stone I lie
Under a broken tree.
I could recover if I shrieked
My heart's agony
To passing bird, but I am dumb
From human dignity.

III

The Mermaid 
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

IV

The Death of the Hare
I have pointed out the yelling pack,
The hare leap to the wood,
And when I pass a compliment
Rejoice as lover should
At the drooping of an eye,
At the mantling of the blood.

Then suddenly my heart is wrung
By her distracted air
And I remember wildness lost
And after, swept from there,
Am set down standing in the wood
At the death of the hare.

V

The Empty Cup
A crazy man that found a cup,
When all but dead of thirst,
Hardly dared to wet his mouth
Imagining, moon-accursed,
That another mouthful
And his beating heart would burst.
October last I found it too
But found it dry as bone,
And for that reason am I crazed
And my sleep is gone.

VI

His Memories
We should be hidden from their eyes,
Being but holy shows
And bodies broken like a thorn
Whereon the bleak north blows,
To think of buried Hector
And that none living knows.

The women take so little stock
In what I do or say
They'd sooner leave their cosseting
To hear a jackass bray;
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;

The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take—
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck—
That she cried into this ear,
'Strike me if I shriek.'

VII

The Friends of his Youth
Laughter not time destroyed my voice
And put that crack in it,
And when the moon's pot-bellied
I get a laughing fit,
For that old Madge comes down the lane,
A stone upon her breast,
And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
And she can get no rest
With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
She that has been wild
And barren as a breaking wave
Thinks that the stone's a child.

And Peter that had great affairs
And was a pushing man
Shrieks, 'I am King of the Peacocks,'
And perches on a stone;
And then I laugh till tears run down
And the heart thumps at my side,
Remembering that her shriek was love
And that he shrieks from pride.

VIII

Summer and Spring
We sat under an old thorn-tree
And talked away the night,
Told all that had been said or done
Since first we saw the light,
And when we talked of growing up
Knew that we'd halved a soul
And fell the one in t'other's arms
That we might make it whole;
Then Peter had a murdering look,
For it seemed that he and she
Had spoken of their childish days
Under that very tree.
O what a bursting out there was,
And what a blossoming,
When we had all the summer-time
And she had all the spring!

IX

The Secrets of the Old
I have old women's secrets now
That had those of the young;
Madge tells me what I dared not think
When my blood was strong,
And what had drowned a lover once
Sounds like an old song.

Though Margery is stricken dumb
If thrown in Madge's way,
We three make up a solitude;
For none alive to-day
Can know the stories that we know
Or say the things we say:

How such a man pleased women most
Of all that are gone,
How such a pair loved many years
And such a pair but one,
Stories of the bed of straw
Or the bed of down.

X

His Wildness
O bid me mount and sail up there
Amid the cloudy wrack,
For Peg and Meg and Paris' love
That had so straight a back,
Are gone away, and some that stay
Have changed their silk for sack.

Were I but there and none to hear
I'd have a peacock cry,
For that is natural to a man
That lives in memory,
Being all alone I'd nurse a stone
And sing it lullaby.



一个男人：青年和老年

Ⅰ

初恋
虽然像飘行的月亮
她受美之残酷的孕育，
她一会儿走路，一会儿脸红，
在我小路上站着，
直到我以为她的身上
长着一颗心，有血有肉。

自从我把手往上一放，
发现一副铁石心肠，
我试图做许多事情，
没有一件成功，
因为在月亮上摸索，
每只手都会发疯。

她一笑使我起了变化，
只成为一个蠢人，
这里晃晃，那里荡荡，
与月亮逝去后的群星
在天上的运转相比，
我的思想更空虚。

Ⅱ

人的自尊 
她的善良如月亮
如果我可以把没内容的
东西叫做善良，
它对谁都一个样，
好像我的痛苦如一幅画
挂上了粉刷过的墙。

因此我像一小块石头
躺在断树下面，
我能复原如我
对飞过的鸟叫鸣
我心中的苦恼，但我哑了，
出于人的自尊。

Ⅲ

美人鱼 
美人鱼找到了游水的少年，
把他当作自己的东西，
用她身子紧紧抱他，
笑着，直往水中跳去，
在残忍的快乐中忘了
即使情人也会溺毙。

Ⅳ

野兔之死
我向吼叫的人群指出，
一只野兔跳入丛林，
我说了句奉承话，
一个情人就会高兴，
看到眼睛低垂，
看到血液上升。

突然我的心紧缩，
由于她失神的模样，
我想起失去的狂野，
然后匆匆离开那地方，
在树林中安心站定，
寻思那野兔的死亡。

Ⅴ

空杯 
几乎干渴得要死，
一个疯子找到了杯子，
却不敢让嘴唇沾湿，
想象着，受月亮诅咒，
再喝一大口，
他跳着的心会破裂。
去年十月我也找到一个，
发现它干涸如骨头，
为此我发了疯，
再也睡不成。

Ⅵ

他的记忆
我们该藏起来，不让他们见，
不过是神圣的展现
像被凄厉的北风吹打
断裂的荆棘的枝干，
去思念被埋葬的赫克托尔
和活人谁也不知的事件。

女人们并不看重
我做的或说的事情，
她们宁可丢下宠物，
去听一只公驴嘶鸣，
我的胳臂如弯曲的荆棘，
但美人就在那里安寝。

全部落第一美人在那儿安寝，
如此大的欢乐她得到——
她打倒了伟大的赫克托尔，
把整个特洛伊城毁掉—
“如我尖叫，你就打我！”
她向我这只耳朵喊道。

Ⅶ

他青年时代的朋友
是欢笑而非时间毁了我的嗓子，
使它带着嘶哑之声，
当月亮鼓起肚子，
我就会大笑不停，
因为老梅琪从巷子下来，
胸前抱着一块石头，
一件外衣裹着石头，
她唱着宝宝睡呀睡，
唱个无止无休；
她曾经狂而不育，
像散裂的波浪，
以为石头就是儿郎。

彼得有过惊人的艳遇，
他敢打敢闯，
他叫道：“我乃孔雀之王，”
然后栖身石上；
那时我笑得眼泪直流，
胸膛的心儿直跳，
想到她叫是为了爱情，
他叫是为了骄傲。

Ⅷ

夏和春
用谈话将夜晚消磨，
我们坐在老荆棘树下，
讲到自我们诞生以来，
做过的事，说过的话；
我们讲到长大成人
知道已把灵魂对分，
两双臂互相拥抱，
以求整合为一个心灵；
接着彼得脸有难色，
因为看来他和她
谈到了他们的幼年，
曾在那一棵树下，
呵，那时节多欢畅奔放，
多么繁花如妍，
当我们拥有全部盛夏，
她拥有整个春天。

Ⅸ

老年人的秘密
如今我懂得老妇人的秘密，
我曾知道年轻人的勾当，
梅琪告诉我不敢想的事。
当我还年轻血气旺，
我淹死过一个情人，
这听来像一支老歌在唱。

玛吉莱要是碰上了梅琪，
她会吓得一口哑，
我们三个沉寂无话；
今天活着的没有谁
能知道我们知道的故事，
或讲我们讲过的话。

在所有过去的人中，
这样的男人怎样最使女人欢畅，
这样的一对怎样相爱多少年，
也就这么一双；
稻草垫床的故事，
或用羽毛垫床。

Ⅹ

他的狂劲儿
呵，让我跳上或飘升
到散乱的云层，
因为伯格、麦格或帕里斯的情人
腰板直挺挺，
他们都已逝去，
留下的把丝绸换了麻巾。

要是我在场，无人听见，
我会让孔雀嘶鸣，
对一个生活在记忆中的人，
这是自然的事情，
孤独中，我会养育一块石头，
唱安眠曲给它听。



Spilt Milk

We that have done and thought,
That have thought and done,
Must ramble, and thin out
Like milk spilt on a stone.


撒了的奶

我们有所为、有所思的人，
我们有所思、有所为的人，
必须慢慢走，越来越稀罕，
就像一碗奶，抛撒岩石间。

     来源：微信公众号星期一    翻译：袁可嘉

     （编辑：张坚）