到灯塔去--埃尔森.麦克维迪

 1.窗户
 是维吉尼亚的碳色眼睛盯视着
打搅我：她对我失望，
读者，甚至在我开始之前。
所以我走进没有她的考试：
没有画架，骷髅头或者披肩，
姿态优美的长袜，敏塔遗漏的胸针。在大厅里
我看着发作的脉搏的未来和所有的女孩，
读书的女孩，一起出去，在书桌前排队，站成一排。
 2.时间过去了
 你需要一个炖锅，和许多时间--
三天从这个情节中缺席。余党
通宵沐浴在 白兰地里，一瓶红色的烈啤酒
从法国带回来。这烈性酒再次沸腾了，
添加回牛肉，肥肉片，小牛脚，蔬菜。六个小时--或者更多--
无所事事。不能炖老了。它不会坏。进餐，一股意识流
爆发了。下雨。下雨。如果不是炖汤，女人干什么呢。
 3.灯塔
 这年我赠书给另一个走了的人，
（我妈妈死的这年），我知道了
发生在圆括号里的大事--
结婚，生子。战争，诗歌。这是
完整的脚本还是总数中间的片段呢。
是窗子边的女人，
数算着时间，从头到尾--
还是这几行：当她缓缓地从银行出来
走进括着括弧的水
一边括弧对她敞开，一边对她关闭。
i The Window
 
It was Virginia’s charcoaled stare
that put me off: her disappointment
in me, the reader, before I even started.
So I walked into the exam without her:
without the easel, the skull or the shawl,
the well-turned stocking, Minta’s
missing brooch. In the hall I watched
the future show its pulse and all the girls,
the girls who’d read the book, set off
together, lined up at desks and rowing.
 
ii Time Passes
 
You need a daubière and too much time –
three days’ absence from the plot. Rump
bathed overnight in brandy, a stout red
brought back from France. The liquor’s
boiled once, added back to beef, calf’s foot,
lardons, les legumes. For six hours – or more –
it idles. It can’t be over-cooked. It will not
spoil. At table, a stream of consciousness
breaks out. And it rains. It rains. If not
the stew, what was the woman on about.
 
iii The Lighthouse
 
The year I gave the book another go,
[the year my mother died], I learned
everything big happens in parenthesis –
marriage, birth, The War, poetry. Is it the full
manuscript or just the bits in the middle
that count. Is it the woman at the window,
marking the hours, from cover to cover –
or these few lines: that as she eased out from
the bank and into the water the bracke