喜欢疯狂的汤姆

（选自 Houseboat Days ）
作者： (美)约翰.阿什贝利（ John Ashberry）
译者:剑郭琴符

你认为它是错误的。后来
所有人都已经出去了,他们的谎言仍然在你耳边回响,
穿过水。你没有看见痛苦的曙光堆积,
一个接一个,四处伸展。他们的词语只是
像真理一样等待你,有时候
出于纯粹,偶然的歌曲,意义
尽管结结巴巴,但你的热情能看到
对岸,在那儿一切都兑现。

那么放下它如同一个负载
再一次继续梦想的缝合,似乎
它依旧古老,就像在一个明亮的,反常冷的
下午,一个过去的生动的梦。最好是让它留在那儿
并快速踮脚离去。尽管音乐已结束。你掌握的时机
与它同行而且似乎
补充必要的感觉。然而就像
城市中的一座农舍,在一些繁忙的,荒凉的大城市林荫道,
它陷入沉寂的方式太过份了,
预先警告,仿佛一张看不见的脸从眼皮耷拉的窗户
向外张望,就像雨突然开始下落
闪电变得疯狂,雷声的昏厥渐渐消失。
那是来到这儿的方式,
他想。烈火的矛,气流的马,
其余的都是为了你,和其余的一起去,
配合迄今为止完成了的每件事情。
一条小河总是指向北方的
芦苇和叶子,昏迷的大地
花朵垂头丧气。林中的这个火车站,
它是怎么建起来的?这个地方
通过这条路传回消息,所有的道路都往后吗?
在几分钟等待的沟通中
努力继续,重新开始,
在窃听中,在狗的倾听中,所有的
令人沮丧的不整齐的树,黑夜在任何地方降下。


Loving Mad Tom


You thought it was wrong. And afterwards
When everyone had gone out, their lying persisted in your ears,
Across the water. You didn’t see the miserable dawns piled up,
One after the other, stretching away.Their word only
Waited for you like the truth, and sometimes
Out of a pure, unintentional song, the meaning
Stammered nonetheless, and your zeal could see
To the opposite shore, where it was all coming true.

Then to lay it down like a load
And take up the dream stitching again, as though
It were still old, as on a bright, unseasonably cold
Afternoon, is a dream past living.Best to leave it there
And quickly tiptoe out. The music ended anyway. The occasions
In your arms went along with it and seemed
To supply the necessary sense. But like
A farmhouse in the city, on some busy, deserted metropolitan avenue,
It was all too much in the way it fell silent,
Forewarned, as though an invisible face looked out
From hooded windows, as the rain suddenly starts to fall
And the lightning goes crazy, and thethunder faints dead away.
That was a way of getting here,
He thought. A spear of fire, a horse of air,
And the rest is done for you, to go with the rest,
To match up with everything accomplished until now.
And always one stream is pointing north
To reeds and leaves, and the stunned land
Flowers in dejection. This station in the woods,
How was it built? This place
Of communicating back along the way, all the way back?
And in an orgy of minutes the waiting
Seeks to continue, to begin again,
Amid bugs, the harking of dogs, all the
Maddening irregularities of trees, and night falls anyway.

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旋律列车

（选自 Houseboat Days ）
作者： (美)约翰.阿什贝利（ John Ashberry）
译者:剑郭琴符

一个有鲜红涂漆指甲的小女孩
问我什么时间---显然那是一块玩具手表
她戴着,为了好玩。穿着别的奇怪的东西
也是为了好玩,就像这欧石楠烟斗和粗花呢大衣

就像彩色日期锯齿状山脉,其接缝线条
此刻被草绘,突降,然后变成难以琢磨的
不能被坐在它--我之间的人的外形推论的
山谷, 而且恰好就像我们的道路平直地穿越
山谷和急流,仿佛我们的列车是一支铅笔

被一根直尺引导,抱住一张阿尔卑斯山脉的壁画式照片
我们俩看到远方就像非官方的
无人称的某种东西,并非不具备奇特的理由
就像一块停顿的表上的时间---一天正好两次。

在火车站的等待只是茫然的
无量纲的,就像一个人(等待)自身。他们如何确定每次花费了
多少时间?一个人开始怀疑没有
尺度或者这是偶然的应用。

月台上孩子们脸上的悲哀
影响到成年人之间的关系,和上计程车的
机会,因为这些事情没有时间表。
按道理你能找到一辆就上哪一辆

你总能找到一辆,但是在环形的确定性中的
机会的片段是这些给予
比萨斜塔身影顽强焦燥的外表的
事物, 向前倾斜飞行进风中。

简而言之,任何停止,在最后一个创造了我们自己的,我们生命的
焦虑,悲哀,遗憾的不耐烦的
云块,直到此时,我们一直和别人打交道的
方式。为什么我们不能
考虑得更周到?这些离开了

月台或等待上车的身影是我的兄弟
在一条路上真正想告诉我为什么世界上只有这么少的
恐慌和混乱,而又有如此多的不幸。
假如我现在俯身舒展,采取几个步骤

在疲倦和厌世的蒸汽云中,像巨大的
白苹果,我可不可以正好穿过附近,模仿
与他们传递我的关心的
姿势和姿态?他们参差不齐的姿态相当于我的,

他们的牢骚撞击回答的银铃
在我本人的胸口中,我知道,就像他们所做的那样,最后的停顿
如何成为最渴望的一个,虽然它意味着

立刻回家,代表快乐和不满的家?

一支可见的合唱曲仿佛唤起了旅途场景的
差异,唱出它们然后成为它们:
不但车站里的人,我对面的
有小葡萄干指甲的孩子,而且窗户,都看透了,

不完全地反射,无情地裂开带点蓝色的
如同一根拉链的模糊的风景。每个声音都有自己的
递减级别,以便在每个阶段让一个占据另一个的空间;
一个从不需要知道一个在哪里

除非一个放弃了倾听,睡眠,靠近一座西方的
除了一座风车磨房啥都没有的小镇。然后
最后剧烈的狂怒落下就像独奏的
声音讲述着它,以某种方式环绕着它,带着一种好运的

氛围和隆重的欢迎,来自于镇长和
居民委员会,向空中抛掷着他们的帽子。
听他们唱歌你该想到它已经发生了
我们的注意力已经重回到了天空中的设备。


Melodic Trains


A little girl with scarlet enameled fingernails
Asks me what time it is--evidently that's a toy wristwatch
She’s wearing, for fun. And it is fun to wear other
Odd things, like this briar pipe and tweed coat

Like date-colored sierras with the lines of seams
Sketched in and plunging now and then into unfathomable
Valleys that can’t be deduced by the shape of the person
Sitting inside it—me, and just as our way is flat across
Dales and gulches, as though our train were a pencil

Guided by a ruler held against a photomural of the Alps
We both come to see distance as something unofficial
And impersonal yet not without its curious justification
Like the time of a stopped watch—right twice a day.

Only the wait in stations is vague and
Dimensionless, like oneself. How do they decide how much
Time to spend in each? One begins to suspect there’s no
Rule or that it's applied haphazardly.

Sadness of the faces of children on the platform,
Concern of the grownups for connections, for the chances
Of getting a taxi, since these have no timetable.
You get one if you can find one though in principle

You can always find one, but the segment of chance
In the circle of certainty is what gives these leaning
Tower of Pisa figures their aspect of dogged
Impatience, banking forward into the wind.

In short any stop before the final one creates
Clouds of anxiety, of sad, regretful impatience
With ourselves, our lives, the way we have been dealing
With other people up until now. Why couldn’t
We have been more considerate? These figures leaving

The platform or waiting to board the train are my brothers
In a way that really wants to tell me why there is so little
Panic and disorder in the world, and so much unhappiness.
If I were to get down now to stretch, take a few steps

In the wearying and world-weary clouds of steam like great
White apples, might I just through proximity and aping
Of postures and attitudes communicate this concern of mine
To them? That their jagged attitudes correspond to mine,

That their beefing strikes answering silver bells within
My own chest, and that I know, as they do, how the last
Stop is the most anxious one of all, though it means
Getting home at last, to the pleasures and dissatisfactions of home?

It’s as though a visible chorus called up the different
Stages of the journey, singing about them and being them:
Not the people in the station, not the child opposite me
With currant fingernails, but the windows, seen through,

Reflecting imperfectly, ruthlessly splitting open the bluish
Vague landscape like a zipper. Each voice has its own
Descending scale to put one in one’s place at every stage;
One need never not know where one is

Unless one give up listening, sleeping, approaching a small
Western town that is nothing but a windmill. Then
The great fury of the end can drop as the solo
Voices tell about it, wreathing it somehow with an aura

Of good fortune and colossal welcomes from the mayor and
Citizens's committees tossing their hats into the air.
To hear them singing you’d think it had already happened
And we had focused back on the forniture of the air.

工模公司鸟瞰图

（选自 Houseboat Days ）
作者： (美)约翰.阿什贝利（ John Ashberry）
译者:剑郭琴符

过去很长时间我常常起床早。
20-30度视力(1),痔疮完好无损,他检查
不管好坏都通晓梦幻的
时间外壳。边缘擦去了,
斜面丢失。不管村民们
庆贺什么,信念越少
你就越少。本人演奏的管风琴音乐的清单,
建筑学的阴谋(太明亮
以至于不能造成太多的凹痕)反对沉思
帮派战争,冰冻奶油,棕榈地形。

在短暂的背景表面或周围,
表层是临时凑成的。生存的力量
绝望地后退进一个有条纹的交谈的
过去。只要他们都不结束
站在映照恐怖分子唱诗班沙漠的这一边。
最好的轿车就像最简单的家,离开海滨
(在那里)所有小悬崖个子都矮,以至于不能成为雾霭。你该
对船坞旁的某人说话,灯塔
石榴石般照耀。它已经变成了一个束缚。


(1)在美国测试的眼睛度数是20/25 20/30，这是什么意思？
20/25 20/30是视力的表示方法，换算为我国通用的视力表示方法，分别为0.8,0.6~0.7.而眼镜度数与视力没有对应关系，如需知道眼镜度数，需要验光。


Bird’s-Eye View of the Tool and Die Co.


For a long time I used to get up early.
20-30 vision, hemorrhoids intact, he checks into the
Enclosure of time familiarizing dreams
For better or worse. The edges rub off,
The slant gets lost. Whatever the villagers
Are celebrating with less conviction is
The less you. Index of own organ-music playing,
Machinations over the architecture (too
Light to make much of a dent) against meditated
Gang-wars, ice cream, loss, palm terrain.

Under and around the quick background,
Surface is improvisation. The force of
Living hopelessly backward into a past of striped
Conversations. As long as none of them ends this side
Of the mirrored desert in terrorist chorales.
The finest car is as the simplest home off the coast
Of all small cliffs too short to be haze. You turn
To speak to someone beside the dock and the lighthouse
Shines like garnets. It has become a stricture.

商务人事广告

（选自 Houseboat Days ）
作者： (美)约翰.阿什贝利（ John Ashberry）
译者:剑郭琴符

令人不安的沉思又来了: “遗留物”是什么?
也许他们有关于它的完整的名字,他们忍受
特权的旧招牌,其权力
从年龄的堆积和黯淡的色彩中
对今天的中心说话。漂流的心,为什么
毫无意义地漫游?个子高高的昨日的守卫者
就像悬崖上的影子一样陡峭;
无论你走哪条路,都在对他们的大量感觉里。
此刻一切都在下降,通向港口的视野。

因此你的膝盖的确需要造得强壮,被奔跑。
我们有地方锻炼,有一套特殊的设备:
膝垫,平衡杆和其他。它工作
在老化的感觉中:你走出来总是有一点提前
不只是为了放松追随的群众的
感觉。那是暴虐,
暴行,傲慢。同时这帐篷让它自身
安静了。它们的墙壁不透明,以至看不见
道路;一段宜人的,能听到一半的旋律爬到它们的天花板--
并不和谐,但残留物由医生处理。明天...
歌声从附近篝火的火焰中爬出,
苍白的,蜡笔画的东西在它们的脆弱中很精致
带着一两个注释表明它没被丢失,
至少在它们身上。歌声装饰我们关于世界的观念
并且标示出其界限,就像一条肥皂泡的饰带。

什么促使我们开始乐于助人?
在开始只有莎草,一块水田
被风吹皱。慢慢地
树木加剧了一直孤独的新奇,
其余的东西开始被画进了素描,然后...寂静,
或空虚,伴随多年。一个人能回到
概括了这些田园画的自然的观念中吗?
然而现在已经完成了建设
反对过去的城墙的工作,不是城墙,
而是带刺铁丝网的藩篱。所以现在我们知道
是什么职业紧跟着
(骨饰,纺织漫长的历险记)
加强阴影色彩的歌声的通道
(那阴影)浸渍你的业余爱好,当你向它弯腰,斜视的
时候。我能做一张
我拥有的每件东西的列表,和指向它的
方向,每件东西花费多少,多少木头,线,彩色墨水,等等。

歌声没有提及方向。
它最多扭曲地面上的经度线
就像嫩枝搭起的粗糙的居所(船舰
还没有到达,它只是一个梦。它在靠近合恩角的
某个地方,尽管波瑞阿斯（北风神）努力吹送
那些低垂的帆。)关于巨大距离的观念
是允许的,甚至在诗琴漫长的滴出中
也毫无疑问。如何逃离?
这个巨人从不让我们逃出,除非我们弄瞎他。

那就是,有一天,我回家的方法。
没有被今天吊在破布上的
老墙,被硬化进
一个永恒的迟到的下午,从灵魂的底部
诱出过长的阴影和鲁莽的彩虹
震惊。如此简单的东西,
我们从它们造出了如此复杂的一些东西
几乎击败了我们。为什么每个东西不能再次简单,
就像第一支歌的第一批词语,当它们出现在
全神贯注,写下它们然后唱出它们的一个人(那里):
“危险从柿子圆盘的中心
它们最后休息的地方,
转向箭头。你该告诫自己
面临危险吗?什么时候它以露天看台的形状
稀疏出现,由一个已经目击到
你写作这个事件的观众,
显著地,在你的日志中?真正承认
它将消散如同苍白的粉红色和蓝色的手帕
(那些手帕)绝迹了几个世纪,变成了包围我们的
蓝色的穹顶,但它们,有些还在这里。”


附言:熟悉《奥德赛》的读者不难看出本诗中的典故:塞壬,风神的皮袋,奥德修斯弄瞎巨人的眼睛,等等.



Business Personals



The disquieting muses again: what are “leftovers”？
Perhaps they have names for it all, who come bearing
Worn signs of privilege whose authority
Speaks out of the accumulation of age and faded colors
To the center of today. Floating heart, why
Wander on senselessly? The tall guardians
Of yesterday are steep as cliff shadows;
Whatever path you take abounds in their sense.
All presently lead downward, to the harbor view.

Therefore do your knees need to be made strong, by running.
We have places for the training and a special on equipment:
Knee-pads, balancing poles and the rest. It works
In the sense of aging: you come out always a little ahead
And not so far as to lose a sense of the crowd
Of disciples. That were tyranny,
Outrage, hubris. Meanwhile this tent is silence
Itself. Its walls are opaque, so as not to see
The road; a pleasant, half-heard melody climbs to its ceiling—
Not peace, but rest the doctor ordered. Tomorrow ...
And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.

What caused us to start caring?
In the beginning was only sedge, a field of water
Wrinkled by the wind. Slowly
The trees increased the novelty of always being alone,
The rest began to be sketched in, and then ... silence,
Or blankness, for a number of years. Could one return
To the idea of nature summed up in these pastoral images?
Yet the present has done its work of building
A rampart against the past, not a rampart,
A barbed-wire fence. So now we know
What occupations to stick to (scrimshaw, spinning tall tales)
By the way the songs deepen the color of the shadow
Impregnating your hobby as you bend over it,
Squinting. I could make a list
Of each one of my possessions and the direction it
Pointed in, how much each thing cost, how much for wood, string, colored ink, etc.

The song makes no mention of directions.
At most it twists the longitude lines overhead
Like twigs to form a crude shelter. (The ship
Hasn’t arrived, it was only a dream. It’s somewhere near
Cape Horn, despite all the efforts of Boreas to puff out
Those drooping sails.) The idea of great distance
Is permitted, even implicit in the slow dripping
Of a lute. How to get out?
This giant will never let us out unless we blind him.

And that’s how, one day, I got home.
Don't be shocked that the old walls
Hang in rags now, that the rainbow has hardened
Into a permanent late afternoon that elicits too-long
Shadows and indiscretions from the bottom
Of the soul. Such simple things,
And we make of them something so complex it defeats us,
Almost. Why can’t everything be simple again,
Like the first words of the first song as they occurred
To one who, rapt, wrote them down and later sang them:
“Only danger deflects
The arrow from the center of the persimmon disc,
Its final resting place. And should you be addressing yourself
To danger? When it takes the form of bleachers
Sparsely occupied by an audience which has
Already witnessed the events of which you write,
Tellingly, in your log? Properly acknowledged
It will dissipate like the pale pink and blue handkerchiefs
That vanished centuries ago into the blue dome
That surrounds us, but which are, some maintain still here.”