Coming Back by Pattiann Rogers

无论她何时回家，
猜出她去过那里总是很容易。
如果她跑着回来，她的头发
和裤子上沾湿了含盐的露珠，花瓣
紫色的附子花的花粉，她的光脚上缠着天使草，
她一定追逐过北美驯鹿，随着它们长满苔藓的鹿角
沿着海边的峭壁，穿过苔原上的簇叶
如果她午夜拖曳着她的灰色丝绸的
窄围巾缓缓归家，她的头发从
她扑了粉的白脸上向后梳去，
她银色的眼睑紧闭，她一定
在林间空地上冰雪覆盖的湖畔
学习看皎洁的冬天的月亮
结冰的水也正好看着它
如果她跑上山坡倒着回来，
她的影子就在她前面，然后她就陪伴着
驼背的三文鱼一直下降到海
再回来，和猛烈向前的激流搏击，
轻擂石头，追随着两个方向的死神之脸，
一路上上下下，往复游动。
但如果她回家，像黎明来到森林
森林里渐渐充满快活的飞蛾，斜擦而过的
扭动的蜥蜴，像树枝般分岔的太阳自我呈现，
如果她归来像光回归火焰
一只独一无二的蜡烛在变黑的黄昏中灼灼燃烧，
如果她来了，移动的样子像
纤细的春天的月桂树摇动，它从其潮湿的根
进入其心脏洁白的空格，
那就是她要去拜访的人，
她在那里，她就能听见的东西。
Whenever she comes home,
it's always easy to guess where she's been.
If she comes back racing, her hair
and trousers wet with salty dew, petals
and pollen from purple monkshood and angelweed
clinging to her bare feet, she's been chasing
the caribou, following their mossy antlers
through the tundra foliage along the cliffs
by the sea.
If she comes slowly home at midnight trailing
narrow scarves of pale silk, her hair
pulled back from her white powdered face,
her silver eyelids closed, she has been
beside the ice-covered lake in the clearing
learning to see the snowy winter moon
exactly as frozen water sees it.
And if she returns by running uphill backwards,
her shadow preceding her, then she has accompanied
the humpbacked salmon down to the sea
and back again, thrashing through fierce forward currents,
ruffling stones, following the two directions
death faces, all the way down and back again.
But if she comes home like dawn comes
to the forest being gradually filled
by the quickened moth, the twitch of the glancing
lizard and the oak-branched sun of its own presence,
if she returns like light returns to the flame
of a single candle burning in a darkening dusk,
if she comes, moving the way a slender
spring laurel moves as it travels from its damp
roots into the pure white spaces of its heart,
then everyone knows for certain
who it is she's been to visit,
what she heard while she was there.