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苏珊•艾森伯格诗选

发布: 2017-4-06 19:08 | 作者: 路也



        作者简介:苏珊•艾森伯格(Susan Aizenberg),美国女诗人,现任教于内布拉斯加州(Nebraska)克瑞顿大学(Creighton University)英文系。
         
        《无法对照之事 》(不谐和音I)
        (仿清少纳言)
              
        我父亲的手,在他中风之前曾经像打印文字般优雅。在父亲死后四个月,我母亲这个左撇子,潦草地在我的生日卡上给“我们”二字加了下划线——“我们希望你无比快乐!”今天早晨低垂的密云是深绿色的,海莴苣在云浪间漂浮。家乡的天空,漂白的床单,内布拉斯加州的热在眩晕的豆田上闪烁,一只像女人那样高挑的神奇、雪白的鹭鸶,在我母亲厨房窗外那手掌状蕨类叶子掩映下显得冷静沉着,它离得那么近,我们几乎可以触摸到那天鹅般的脖颈。黑熊幼仔,昨夜越过回廊灯光的黄色晕圈,消失在了越来越宽的黑色沼泽里,它不会被守林人发霉的炸面圈诱惑到安全地带。鸥鸟尖利的歌声那样清澈。卡罗莱纳州的蝉鼓动着薄翅在鸣叫。
        
        当一个人不再爱着什么人的时候,会觉得那个人变成了其他人,尽管他还是同一个人。
        替换幽魂。一个悲哀的问题。无法哀悼。
        狼嚎时分。在我们借来的床的上方,一只风扇在飞速地旋转着,母亲有一只木制的布谷鸟,音键清脆,除此之外便是一片寂静。母亲相信那只木布谷鸟是父亲灵魂的传令官,是的每一钟点我都能听到它的啼叫,那从机械的喉咙发出来的响亮的呼唤,宛如睡梦者释放出来的气息。它把我从过于明亮的厨房的梦中惊醒了,在那窗前,在那父亲永远不会再站立的窗前,鹭鸶用叫声将这房子周围空间刺穿了,并向我发出呼唤“过来,快看!”当我真的走了过去,他没有退缩,而我却逃离了,从他的吻中。
         
        附:
        Things That Cannot Be Compared (Dissonance I)                
        After Sei Shonagon
         
        My father's hand, elegant as typescript, before his stroke. My mother's lefty scrawl, the way she underlined We on my birthday card—We wish you much happiness!— four months after his death. The deep green of this morning's lowering cloudbank, sea lettuce riding the Intertidal. Bleached sheet of the sky back home, Nebraska heat shimmering above the stunned soy fields. Miraculous snowy egret, tall as a woman, feeding with genteel sang-froid on palm fronds outside my mother's kitchen window, so close we might have touched her swanny neck. Black bear cub, lost last night in the widening dark glade beyond the yellow hoops of porch lights, who would not be lured to safety by the game warden's stale doughnuts. Shrill song of gulls scavenging. The flutter and purr of Carolina locusts.
        When one has stopped loving someone, one feels that person has become someone else, even though he is the same person.
        Substitute ghost. A question of mourning. Unable to mourn.
        Red hour of the wolf. No sound except the whirr of fan blades above our borrowed bed, the silvery notes of my mother's wooden cuckoo. She believes it herald of my father's spirit. Each hour I hear it crow, bright cry rising from its mechanical throat like the freed breath of sleepers. It wakes me from my dream of her overlit kitchen, the negative space before the window where my father is not standing, transfixed by the egret, calling to me to Come, see! Where he does not wince as I join him, recoil from his kiss.
         
          
        《致维希尼克》
         
        诗中意象由罗曼•维希尼克《消失的世界》中的摄影而引发
         
         
        但愿他们完全只是灵魂,圣徒
        或像沟渠里茂盛的杂草
        倚着贫民区的墙
        单单靠空气和阳光就能活下来,你是知道的
         
        从胡同中第一次涂抹时发出吱吱声
        标语就贴满了庭院栅栏和整齐的店铺正面
        支持平等与和平
        投票赞成希特勒,充斥了你深爱的柏林
         
        街道拐角处的面包店橱窗里
        摆放着从黑面包和甜蛋糕
        一直到看上去像老收音机天线的
        那些测量头骨的装置
         
        把吉普赛人从混血儿和犹太人中分出来
        把混血儿和犹太人从雅利安人中分出来
        你的邻居络绎不绝地来验证纯种的家系
        其实他们已成幽灵
         
        面孔镶在地下室窗子上
        没穿鞋的孩子和老人向他们无法进入的街道窥视
         
        补鞋匠在空凳子旁游手好闲
        一个年轻人
         
        无家可归,把他的全部家当放在粗纸袋里拎着
        这是你的先人,也是我的先人,罗曼
         
        现在,一本摄影集摆放在我的膝上
        偷带的莱卡相机藏在你的大衣里
         
        你拍摄下这些普通故事
        那些在1936年的华沙消失了的犹太人
         
        在这里,出于习惯或渺茫的希望,
        毒贩子的阴影移到了光秃的货摊后面。在这里,
         
        一个幸运的搬运工在破烂的柳条筐上打盹
        把他的靴子紧紧抱在胸前
         
        一位长胡须的拉比倾听
        他的学生讲述S形衣服,那是一个瘦小男孩,十岁
         
        或者十七岁
        这是一个有饭吃的日子,一周一顿
         
        多至三顿。罗曼,这就是你的先人,也是我的
        虽然对我们来说,他们是那样陌生
         
        他们戴着皮帽子,穿着中世纪的斗篷
        说着他们古怪的语言——意第绪语
         
        他们把破裂的俄罗斯、德国
        以及波兰当作他们仅有的国土,吟着古老的希伯莱经文
         
        做着祈祷,神情入迷
        对着一个不可名状的上帝
         
        他们唱着赞歌,抚慰,号哭,咕哝,吼叫,
        而上帝从来不会宠爱或者怜悯他们
         
        无论逃到哪里他们都是异乡人
        你写道,我曾经想,至少要为他们挽回面子        
         
        没有照片记录拉比的回答
        说明文字告诉我们这个男孩
         
        尽管大有前途――甚至在那里
        他们还说到了前途
         
        他却无法学习,一心只想着食物
        你没有把拉比拍照下来
         
        是的,那男孩倒下了,浮雕一样昏蹶倒下
        一只胳臂举着,手掌向上     
         
        他总是被雄辩和伶牙俐齿所迷醉
        他的侧影的轮廓那么清晰那么亲切
         
        那是我儿子或你儿子的侧影,如小鸟侧影般活泼呢
         
        附:
        To Vishniac
                     
        Images in this poem are occasioned by photographs in Roman Vishniac’s  A Vanished World.
          
        If only they’d been purely souls, saints,
        or like the ditch weed thriving
        against the ghetto wall, could have survived
        on air and sunlight alone. You knew
         
        from the first graffiti shrieking in the alleys,
        the posters erupting on courtyard paling
        and tidy storefronts, Support Equality and Peace,
        Vote for Hitler, all over your beloved Berlin,
         
        the corner bakery’s window display
        changed from dark loaves and sweet cakes
        to what looked like antique radio
        antennas, devices for measuring skulls,
         
        sorting Gypsies from Mongrels and Jews,
        Mongrels and Jews from Aryans,
        your neighbors queueing up to certify pure
        lineage, that already they were ghost
         
        Faces framed in basement windows,
        shoeless children and old men peer out at streets
         
        they cannot enter. A cobbler idles beside
        his empty bench.  A young man,
         
        homeless, carries all he owns in a paper sack. 
        Your ancestors, and mine, Roman,
         
        a book of photographs I now hold in my lap. 
        Smuggled Leica hidden in your coat,
         
        you shot these ordinary story
        of the vanished Jews of Warsaw, 1936.
         
        Here, the shades of peddlers pace, out of habit,
        or frail hope, behind bare stalls. Here,
         
        a lucky porter dozes on the splintered
        crate he’s mule to, boots held tight against
         
        his chest. A bearded Rabbi listens
        as his student, a boy so thin he might be ten
         
        or seventeen, makes his case for an ess tog,
        an eating day, one more meal a week,
         
        to make three.  Your ancestors, and mine,
        Roman, though strange even to us
         
        in their fur hats and medieval cloaks,
        their queer tongues – the Yiddish
         
        they made of fractured Russian, German,
        and Polish their only country, the ancient Hebrew
         
        prayers they chanted, davening, the tranced
        rocking and keening, mumbled or shouted
         
        songs offered up to a nameless God
        who’d never shown them favor or mercy –
         
        marking them foreign wherever they fled.
        I wanted, you write, at least to save their faces.             
         
        No photograph records the Rabbi’s answer.
        The caption tells us that the boy,
         
        though promising – even there,
        they spoke of promise –
         
        could not study, that he thought only of food.
        You did not photograph the Rabbi’s
         
        yes, the boy fallen, having fainted
        in relief.  One arm raised, palm up,                
         
        he’s forever caught in eloquence, articulate
        gesture, his sharp, familiar profile
         
        my son’s or yours, lively as a bird’s.
        
        

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