adieudusk 译
一座新的火山爆发了，
报纸上说，上周我在读
某只船看见一座岛屿在那儿诞生：
起初是一缕水汽，十英里以外；
然后是一小块黑斑——玄武岩，也许——
从商船上大副的双筒望远镜中浮现
并像一只苍蝇一般勾住地平线。
他们给它命名。可是我可怜的旧日的岛仍然
未被重新发现，不能重新命名。
没有哪本书曾把它讲对。
好吧，我有五十二座
悲惨的，小小的火山
我可以几个打滑的大跨步就爬上——
火山灰堆一般死寂。
我曾经常常坐在最高一个的边缘
数着其它挺立的几座，
光裸而灰沉，它们的头都被爆飞。
我会想如果它们是我想象的
火山应该有的大小，那么我将
成为一个巨人；
而如果我成为了一个巨人，
我就不能忍受去想山羊
和海龟的大小，
或海鸥，或层叠的滚滚巨浪
——一道闪耀的六角形巨浪
逼近逼临，却永不真的来临，
闪耀又闪耀，尽管天空
大体阴霾。
我的岛屿似乎是种
云的倾倒。半个地球所有
剩余的云都来临并高悬
于火山口上——它们焦渴的喉咙
烫得不能触摸。
是因为这个雨才这么多吗？
又是为什么有时整个地方嘶嘶作响？
海龟蹒跚而过，高高穹窿，
茶壶一般嘶嘶着。
（而我为了随便哪种茶壶，
付出了很多年月，或取走了一些，当然。）
岩浆的褶皱，奔向大海，
会嘶鸣。我会转身。然后它们会证明
是更多的海龟。
处处海滩遍地都是岩浆，斑驳，
黑色，红色，和白色，还有灰色；
大理石纹的色彩精美地展示。
而我有海龙卷。哦，
一次半打，遥遥在远处，
它们会来了又去，前进又后退，
它们的头在云中，脚在移动的片片
磨卷起的白色中。
玻璃烟柱，柔弯的，渐细消，
玻璃的祭司般的生灵……我观察
水在它们之中轻烟一般盘旋上升。
美，是的，却没有什么相伴。
我总是让步于自怜。
“我配得到这个？我猜我必得如此。
如果不是这样我就不会在这儿。有那么一个
我确实选择了这个的时刻吗？
我不记得了，可是可能有过。”
不管怎样，自怜有什么不好？
我的腿习惯地晃荡在
一个火山口的边缘，我告诉自己
“怜惜应该始于家中。”于是我越感觉
怜惜，便越感觉是在家中。
太阳落在大海中；同一个古怪的太阳
从大海中升起；
而那儿曾经有个它也有个我。
这座岛屿每样事物都有一个种类：
一种树蜗，一种明艳的紫罗兰的蓝
和一层薄薄的壳，爬过每样东西，
爬过一种树，
一种乌黑的，灌木丛样的东西。
蜗牛壳一堆堆躺在这些的下面
在远处，
你会发誓它们是鸢尾花床。
有一种莓果，暗红色。
我尝过它，一个接一个，每隔几个小时。
微酸，不坏，没有不良反应；
于是我自酿。我会饮下
这极度的，冒泡的，刺激的
直接上头的东西
并吹奏着我自制的笛子
（我想它有这地球上最怪异的音节）
然后，晕眩着，在山羊之中呼喊着跳着舞。
自制，自制！可难道我们不都是？
我感到对我的岛上最微不足道的生产
一种深深的喜爱。
不，不完全是，因为最微不足道的是
一种悲惨的哲学。
因为我所知不多。
为什么我对某些事物知之不多？
希腊戏剧或天文学？我读过的书
满是空白；
诗歌——好吧，我试过
对我的鸢尾花床朗读，
“它们在那内在的眼上闪烁，
哪个是至福……”什么东西的至福？
等我回去时我做的第一件事
就是查找它。
这岛闻起来一股山羊和海鸟粪的味道。
山羊是白色的，海鸥也是，
两者都太温驯，或者它们想
我也是一只山羊，或一只海鸥。
咩，咩，咩并尖叫，尖叫，尖叫，
咩……尖叫……咩……我仍然不能
从我的耳朵中抖掉它们；现在它们就在伤痛。
质疑尖叫，意义不明答复在
一地嘶嘶的雨上
嘶嘶，挪动的海龟
折磨着我的神经。
当所有的海鸥顷刻齐飞，它们作声
如强风中的一颗大树，它的树叶。
我会闭上眼睛并想着一棵树，
一棵橡树，比如说，有真正的树荫，在某处。
我曾听说牛得了岛屿病。
我想山羊也是。
一只比利公山羊会站在火山上
我曾为希望之山或绝望之山洗礼
（我有足够的时间游戏名字），
可怜地咩咩叫，咩咩叫，嗅着空气。
我会抓着它的胡子看着他。
它的瞳仁，水平的，变窄
毫无表达，或者有一点点怨恨。
这些颜色让我厌倦之极！
有一天我用我的红莓把一只羊羔
染成明亮的红色，只是为了看看
某个东西有点不同。
然后他的母亲认不得他了。
梦都是最糟的。当然我梦到食物
还有爱，可它们是欢愉的而非
其他什么。可那时我梦着像
撕开一个婴儿喉咙一类的事，
错把他当作一只羊羔。我会有
其他岛屿从我的岛延伸出去的噩梦，岛屿的
无限，岛屿卵生岛屿，
像青蛙卵变成
岛屿蝌蚪，知道我不得不在所有和
每一个上生活，最终，
世世代代，记录它们的植物群，
它们的动物群，它们的地理。
正当我想我不能再忍受
哪怕一分钟，星期五来了。
（对那件事的叙述全都搞错了。）
星期五很好。
星期五是好的，而且我们是朋友。
如果他要是个女人！
我想繁衍后代，
他也一样，我想，可怜的男孩。
有时候他会爱抚山羊羔，
并和它们赛跑，或带着一只到处逛。
——看上去真美；他有一个漂亮的身体。
然后有一天他们来了带走了我们。
现在我住在这儿，另一个岛屿，
那看起来不像一个岛，可是谁又能判定呢？
我的血液中充满了它们，我的大脑
孕育岛屿。可是那群岛
渐渐未成而终。我老了。
我也厌倦了，喝着我的真正的茶，
被一些无趣的废物围绕。
架子上那儿的刀子——
发出意义的臭味，像一个十字架。
它活过。有多少年
我祈求它，恳求它，不要断了？
我谙熟每个缺口和刮痕，
淡蓝的刀锋，断了的刀尖，
刀柄上木纹的线条……
现在它根本都不看我。
活着的灵魂滴答而去。
我的双眼停留在它上面并死去。
本地的博物馆要我
把所有东西都留给他们：
笛子，刀子，皱缩的鞋子，
我脱毛的山羊皮裤子
（蛀虫进了皮毛），
费了我多少时间记起
伞骨该怎么弄的太阳伞。
它仍然能用可是，折起来了，
像一只拔了毛皮包骨头的鸡。
怎么会有人想要这东西？
——而星期五，我亲爱的星期五，死于麻疹
十七年前三月来临的时候。
Crusoe in England
Elizabeth Bishop
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s still
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
Well, I had fifty-two
miserable, small volcanoes I could climb
with a few slithery strides—
volcanoes dead as ash heaps.
I used to sit on the edge of the highest one
and count the others standing up,
naked and leaden, with their heads blown off.
I’d think that if they were the size
I thought volcanoes should be, then I had
become a giant;
and if I had become a giant,
I couldn’t bear to think what size
the goats and turtles were,
or the gulls, or the overlapping rollers
—a glittering hexagon of rollers
closing and closing in, but never quite,
glittering and glittering, though the sky
was mostly overcast.
My island seemed to be
a sort of cloud-dump. All the hemisphere’s
left-over clouds arrived and hung
above the craters—their parched throats
were hot to touch.
Was that why it rained so much?
And why sometimes the whole place hissed?
The turtles lumbered by, high-domed,
hissing like teakettles.
(And I’d have given years, or taken a few,
for any sort of kettle, of course.)
The folds of lava, running out to sea,
would hiss. I’d turn. And then they’d prove
to be more turtles.
The beaches were all lava, variegated,
black, red, and white, and gray;
the marbled colors made a fine display.
And I had waterspouts. Oh,
half a dozen at a time, far out,
they’d come and go, advancing and retreating,
their heads in cloud, their feet in moving patches
of scuffed-up white.
Glass chimneys, flexible, attenuated,
sacerdotal beings of glass ... I watched
the water spiral up in them like smoke.
Beautiful, yes, but not much company.
I often gave way to self-pity.
“Do I deserve this? I suppose I must.
I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Was there
a moment when I actually chose this?
I don’t remember, but there could have been.”
What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?
With my legs dangling down familiarly
over a crater’s edge, I told myself
“Pity should begin at home.” So the more
pity I felt, the more I felt at home.
The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun
rose from the sea,
and there was one of it and one of me.
The island had one kind of everything:
one tree snail, a bright violet-blue
with a thin shell, crept over everything,
over the one variety of tree,
a sooty, scrub affair.
Snail shells lay under these in drifts
and, at a distance,
you’d swear that they were beds of irises.
There was one kind of berry, a dark red.
I tried it, one by one, and hours apart.
Sub-acid, and not bad, no ill effects;
and so I made home-brew. I’d drink
the awful, fizzy, stinging stuff
that went straight to my head
and play my home-made flute
(I think it had the weirdest scale on earth)
and, dizzy, whoop and dance among the goats.
Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?
I felt a deep affection for
the smallest of my island industries.
No, not exactly, since the smallest was
a miserable philosophy.
Because I didn’t know enough.
Why didn’t I know enough of something?
Greek drama or astronomy? The books
I’d read were full of blanks;
the poems—well, I tried
reciting to my iris-beds,
“They flash upon that inward eye,
which is the bliss ...” The bliss of what?
One of the first things that I did
when I got back was look it up.
The island smelled of goat and guano.
The goats were white, so were the gulls,
and both too tame, or else they thought
I was a goat, too, or a gull.
Baa, baa, baa and shriek, shriek, shriek,
baa ... shriek ... baa ... I still can’t shake
them from my ears; they’re hurting now.
The questioning shrieks, the equivocal replies
over a ground of hissing rain
and hissing, ambulating turtles
got on my nerves.
When all the gulls flew up at once, they sounded
like a big tree in a strong wind, its leaves.
I’d shut my eyes and think about a tree,
an oak, say, with real shade, somewhere.
I’d heard of cattle getting island-sick.
I thought the goats were.
One billy-goat would stand on the volcano
I’d christened Mont d’Espoir or Mount Despair
(I’d time enough to play with names),
and bleat and bleat, and sniff the air.
I’d grab his beard and look at him.
His pupils, horizontal, narrowed up
and expressed nothing, or a little malice.
I got so tired of the very colors!
One day I dyed a baby goat bright red
with my red berries, just to see
something a little different.
And then his mother wouldn’t recognize him.
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I’d dream of things
like slitting a baby’s throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I’d have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography.
Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it
another minute longer, Friday came.
(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)
Friday was nice.
Friday was nice, and we were friends.
If only he had been a woman!
I wanted to propagate my kind,
and so did he, I think, poor boy.
He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,
and race with them, or carry one around.
—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.
And then one day they came and took us off.
Now I live here, another island,
that doesn’t seem like one, but who decides?
My blood was full of them; my brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I’m old.
I’m bored, too, drinking my real tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain on the handle ...
Now it won’t look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.
The local museum’s asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a time
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up,
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?
—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles
seventeen years ago come March.
