张洁 译
它滚向了一个站点沿着昏暗的车库的
一堵墙，滚进了升降门的
拱门，最后一声尖锐的木槌声
这么远地落到了它的后面现在惟有
想象力才能听见，啪嗒着在
修剪过的想象的草地上面。它淡绿色的条纹——
那老厨房勺子手柄的绿色——
如今更加苍白了，在灰尘的一声耳语下，
木头沿着纹理裂开了
以便那些裂纹一圈一圈地绕着它
就像一颗行星上的环。也许它就是
一个行星，甚至不是一个较小的
而是值得我们全神贯注的某个事物，
而我，在穿过这一生，
推着我的割草机进入那片阴影时，
成了第一个看见它等在那里的人。
Croquet Ball
by TED KOOSER
From At Home Poems. The Comstock Writers Group, 2016.
It has rolled to a stop along one wall
of the dim garage, rolled in through the wicket
of the overhead door, the last sharp clack
of a mallet so far behind it now that only
the imagination can hear it, clacking in over
the clipped, imagined grass. Its pale green stripe—
the green of the handles on old kitchen spoons—
is even paler now, under a whisper of dust,
and the wood has cracked along the grain
so that the cracks go round and round it
like rings on a planet. And perhaps it is
a planet, and not even one of the lesser ones
but something worth our full attention,
and I, while passing through this life,
wheeling my lawnmower into the shadows,
have been the first to see it waiting there.
