ELIZABETH BISHOP 译诗两首
人蛾
这儿，上方, 建筑的裂缝里盈满了消瘦的月光。 人的整个影子仅像他的帽子一般大。 影子躺在他的脚下像一个玩偶藉以站立的圆圈。 他将别针扭转过来，针尖被月亮磁化。 他对月亮视而不见；仅仅观察着她的属性， 感受着那落在手上的，奇异的光。 不凉不热，无法被温度计测量。 但是当人蛾， 偶尔罕见地拜访地表， 月亮在他看来陌生异常。他 从一侧人行道的边缘开口钻出来 恐惧地环视建筑的外观。 他觉得月亮是在开在天顶的一个小洞， 证明了天空毫无防护作用。 他颤抖，但为了测量他必须爬到力所能及之处。 爬上建筑物的表面， 他的影子像摄影师的黑布拖在身后 满心忧惧，他爬行着，想着这一次他能成功 将他的头挤过那枚圆而明亮的开口 然后穿过，如钻出一个曝光的漆黑影轴 （当然，站在他下方的人就不会有此种幻想。） 但人蛾最怕的，当然，即使他失败， 就是掉落回去，心惊肉跳却毫发无损。 然后他返回 那苍白的水泥地铁站，他称其为“家”。 他鼓翼急追，但赶不及登上那寂静的班车 极速行驶，与他相宜。 门轻盈地合拢。 人蛾总是面朝着错误的方向坐 地铁出发，瞬间加速到可怕的极速， 毫无轴承的预热，衔接之类过渡。 他讲不出有速率多快，他是在倒着旅行。 每夜，他必须被 搭载着穿过人工隧道，做着循回往复的梦 像车厢下一一重现的枕木, 这些影像构成了他奔涌思绪的基底。 他不敢望向窗外。 那第三根轨道，不间断的毒风吹过他身侧， 他把风看成一种天生易感的疾病。 他不得不把手揣在兜里， 就像其他人必须戴围巾一样。 如果你抓住了他， 拿手电筒照向他的眼睛。那瞳孔 全然是黑漆漆的，整个的夜， 当他回视你时 夜晚毛茸茸的边缘收紧，然后他合上眼睑 从那里渗出一滴泪。他唯一的财产。 像蜂的螫针，滑落。 他偷偷将它接在掌心里，如果你不 仔细看， 他会把它咽下去。然而，如果你在注意，他会 将它捧给你， 那泪清凉如地下的泉水，清澈可饮。
The Man-Moth (Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”) Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
三月末 天冷，起风了，白日将尽 几乎不够沿着长海岸完成散步。 万物都远远地退缩了 内敛: 浪潮辽远，海洋枯瘪， 海鸟三三两两。 喧扰的离岸冷风 麻木了我们半边的脸颊； 打乱了一列 加拿大雁群的长队 在屹立如钢铁的浓雾中 吹回了低回婉转的无声浪排。 天比水黑沉 ——这是羊脂玉的色泽。 沿着湿漉漉的沙，我们穿着橡胶靴 追随着一串巨大的狗爪印(大得离奇， 像狮爪的。) 继续前行， 踏着白弦的水线，杳杳，无尽， 回旋进潮汐线，又没入水中， 巡回往复。 终于，到了尽头: 一片稠密的白色喧腾， 等人高，被水浪冲刷，在每一个波浪上涌起， 突然的幽灵，回落，湿透了，咽了气... 一根风筝线？——但是没有风筝。 我想一直走到我梦中的房屋原型去。 我的加密梦幻屋，扭曲的盒体 架在桩子上，覆以绿色的瓦片， 法国百合一样的房屋，但更绿些。 (用苏打水的碳酸氢盐煮沸过？) 用尖桩栅栏隔开春季的潮水，栅栏—— 也许是铁轨枕木而来？ (关于这地方的许多事情都是模棱两可。) 我想赋闲于彼处，什么也不做， 或者不做太多，永远，在两间空旷的房间里。 透过双筒望远镜眺望远方。读乏善可陈的书， 古老的，卷帙浩繁的书，写没用的笔记， 跟自己说话，在雾蒙蒙的天气里 看那水滴坠落，因饱浸光线而沉甸甸。 夜晚，来一杯美利坚兑水烈酒。【1】 我将用一只厨房里的火柴点燃它。 可爱的透明蓝焰 将会颤抖，在玻璃中与影成双。 梦屋里一定得有个火炉和烟囱。 歪歪斜斜，却被金属丝缠得牢固， 还有电力，大概吧 ——最起码，背后会有另一根线， 以柔软的姿态，把一切事物 拴在绵绵沙丘后的什么东西上。
有光照着，可以阅读，完美！但——不可能。 但是那天的风过于寒冷， 到不了那么远的地方。 况且，梦屋一定是被木板封得严严实实。 回去的路上，另一边的脸颊也冻僵了。 阳光闪耀了一瞬。 在短短一分钟内，在沙洲的斜切面上。 那些棕褐色，潮湿而散乱的石头。 散发出色彩斑斓， 所有足够高的石头都投下长长的阴影， 彼此独立的影子，接着又将它们拽回。 它们可能是在嘲笑太阳这狮子， 然而现在他已经位于它们身后。 ——在白日将尽时分漫步于海滩的太阳。 踩出那些巨大而宏伟的爪印， 他也许是将风筝扇上了天空，与它戏耍呢。
The end of March （For John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read: Duxbury）
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken. Seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist. The sky was darker than the water --it was the color of mutton-fat jade. Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we followed a track of big dog-prints (so big they were more like lion-prints).
Then we came on lengths and lengths, endless, of wet white string, looping up to the tide-line, down to the water, over and over. Finally, they did end: a thick white snarl, man-size, awash, rising on every wave, a sodden ghost, falling back, sodden, giving up the ghost... A kite string?--But no kite. I wanted to get as far as my proto-dream-house, my crypto-dream-house, that crooked box set up on pilings, shingled green, a sort of artichoke of a house, but greener (boiled with bicarbonate of soda?), protected from spring tides by a palisade of--are they railroad ties? (Many things about this place are dubious.) I'd like to retire there and do nothing, or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms: look through binoculars, read boring books, old, long, long books, and write down useless notes, talk to myself, and, foggy days, watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light. At night, a grog a l'américaine. I'd blaze it with a kitchen match and lovely diaphanous blue flame would waver, doubled in the window. There must be a stove; there is a chimney, askew, but braced with wires, and electricity, possibly --at least, at the back another wire limply leashes the whole affair to something off behind the dunes. A light to read by--perfect! But--impossible. And that day the wind was much too cold even to get that far, and of course the house was boarded up. On the way back our faces froze on the other side. The sun came out for just a minute. For just a minute, set in their bezels of sand, the drab, damp, scattered stones were multi-colored, and all those high enough threw out long shadows, individual shadows, then pulled them in again. They could have been teasing the lion sun, except that now he was behind them --a sun who'd walked the beach the last low tide, making those big, majestic paw-prints, who perhaps had batted a kite out of the sky to play with.
