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——中译外—— 三、肖开愚的诗（3首）……………………Michelle Yeh, John Cayley等译 肖开愚 当代著名诗人，1960年生于四川中江县和平乡。北京·上苑艺术馆——艺术委员会常务委员，现为河南大学教授。1986年开始发表诗歌，著有诗集《动物园的狂喜》《学习之甜》等，作品被译为德、英、法、意等语言出版，著有1500多行的长诗《向杜甫致敬》。 Two Old Ladies on a Small Train This shower of rain is strange, it smells a bit of periods. Old age, eh? – what can you do? My right buttock’s twisted, my right leg’s twisted too, never mind walking or standing, even sitting or lying down are sore enough. It’s hard to bear, though, isn’t it? My left leg’s fine, my left buttock’s all right, so the other half of me is OK – screw it, enough! Look at you and me, both shot to hell, never mind the seam in the knickers, or that legal thread which stitches lips shut. Everything’s already broken enough, these rains every year, always, assaulting the nights; this year, on top of putting up with all that, I had to bite my tongue, a distant relative said he’d come and see me, but those were his last words. Bone and plastic, it’s a tricky match but we still have some time left, let’s give it a shot before we get to the little stream on that big border; let’s scrub up, then you tell me, isn’t fishing just waiting for the fish to fall asleep? Every little station we stop at, it’s like there are retired girls working overtime. They quarrel, tidy their handbags. Give irrelevant, clever-clever, answers. Four hands lead each other on, as if such superannuated penalty boxes would ever be breached. It really is like the pattering of spring rain, isn’t it, sitting on the train – an endless penetration – and you can touch itchy trees anywhere. Two people heading to the terminus, as if it were a new point of balance, and everywhere the drip of green eggs from a wound. March-August 2000, Röderhof-Wewelsfleth[BH, WNH] Raining (in memory of Kropotkin) It’s May, thunder squeezing in between drizzle, and from the verandah I look out over Suzhou Creek: painfully slow, the dockers are unloading coal, and the pitch black water is fast flowing by; an empty barge blows its whistle, and shivering like a weakened woman in childbed it steams into the deep shade of the locust trees; rain is falling, thunder is booming. Another coal barge docks at the quay, ‘Catch!’ a sailor throws the hawser ashore, it’s caught and the shout is ‘Jump in!’ then he leaps into the hold, presumably for a smoke. After the faintest thunder has gone, there’s a flash of pale lightning, and this is the time I’m hoping to join them to the shifting of the dripping coal with Bakunin’s hands, it isn’t because the dark rays of the lightning have changed the faces of the he-men in the rain: the libation of hard liquor that’s filled their bodies – they can give me that, but after the rain falls heavily for a while it stops, and they don’t seem to notice. Was it for today that I once risked my life on those journeys? Courage snatched from drizzling rain. [BH] Early Spring February the sun used to shine on me; in Chongqing one drop of dew’s early mood enveloping images one by one I bypass stretch after stretch of air; the railway hurts trains till they flee the light, cuckoo’s light song left behind I say, hello peaks, and parasol trees, pine and cypress too height regardless, please let me love as if in secret in Hunan, sun shining in the eyes of my childhood my hands grew up, the gently fondled road was shortened dust around the city whirls and dances round and round horn like a brother, car wheels a kaleidoscope teething pain changes into the scars on my backside fruit presses me to the tree, mercilessly knocks me down. Oh, I still can feel that I am alive today alive in a phony place made out of paper; spring clucks and coos, sun prods all over like a quack doctor prods at these up-front or could it be these deferred times, prods and prods at the utopia of this world oh, shun the hidden sage, useless as a rotten rope [BH] Mao Zedong All the red tape that’s losing its colour and its shape makes the VIP of correct content partial to silver-grey – colour of the clouds – and indigo – colour of the sea the well-regulated exterior of immense affairs. He is fond of this sort of country the sun hangs on his forehead like a badge, suspended above a sea of people. The unlimited reality of steel new from the furnace surrounds the square, where limited and unlimited intersect, with barbicans not of gold, but clay. The press acclaims the victory of the ideal the unruly tides go on rising the hurricane in millions of hearts fills the hollow dimensions of the banners billowing sails command the sea’s waters to rise the sea only has ship bones and the sea bed. He sleeps in a swimming pool full of old books in between rebuilding work, watching the air speaking in short hermetic lines unanalysable meaning hidden in tough briars of language, warrior’s language from an invisible battlefield, who understands it? [BH] |
二零二二年第一期
