里索斯诗24首
or like whole bodies. These hands
remain listless in the premature spring,
they sneeze, cough, complain, grow silent,
with their genitals withered in the sun.
Opposite, a woman suckles her infant.
Her hands, though motionless, are
two naked runners in a large marble arena.
Night undresses you. Her hands tremble.
All naked, your body shines in the shadows.
That wise zero that squeezed our necks
like a boiled egg sliced by a knife.
All night long they talked, raged, wrangled,
strove with passion and sincerity to find a compromise
or some separation; humbled and were humbled; regretted
the time lost—the fools; at last they cast off their clothes
and stood there, beautiful, naked, humiliated, defenseless. Dawn was breaking.
From the roof opposite, a flock of birds took wing
as though some gambler had finally cast into the air a marked pack of cards.
Thus, without arguments, justifications, or assurances,
day ascended from the hills with the cruel pride of action.
This tree had taken root in the far side of the garden,
tall, slender, solitary—perhaps its height
betrayed a secret idea of intrusion. It never produced
either fruit or flower, only a long shadow that split the garden in two,
and a measurement not applicable to the stooped, laden trees.
Every evening, when the glorious sunset was fading,
a strange, orange bird roosted silently in its foliage
like its only fruit—a small golden bell
in a green, enormous belfry. When the tree was cut down,
this bird flew above it with small, savage cries,
describing circles in the air, describing in the sunset
the inexhaustible shape of the tree, and this small bell
rang invisibly on high, and even higher than the tree’s original height.
The see, the sun, the tree. And again:
that in this inverted repetition
the sun is once again found in the middle
like sensual delight in the center of the body.
Platanákia, St. Constantine, 1953—1964
The mountain is red. The sea is green.
The sky is yellow. The earth blue.
Between a bird and a leaf sits death.
Words are much like stones. You can build
peaceful houses with white furniture, with white beds,
provided only that somebody is found to inhabit them or at least
to stand and look through the garden railings at the moment
when the windowpanes are in inflamed maroon, and up on the hills
the evening bells are ringing, and after a while
the slack bell rope beats on the wall by itself.
A peaceful yard, silent. The sickly trees, sad,
far away in time. The smell of mould,
the lizard, the dry well, the pulleys. There
the lame boy comes out in the evening. At the other door,
across the way, the one-handed boy stands, looking afar.
They do not greet each other. They clench their teeth. They want to forget
the killed bird they had buried together one evening when
the one still had his leg and the other hand,
and the straw chair near the rosebush
was warm with the sun, with nobody sitting there,
and everything was pointless, sad, immobile,
and therefore immoral, in a city
of long ago, naively nailed to the future.
Tall mountains, taller clouds, meeting
among trees and myths, on precipitous slopes,
there where the healthy omnipotent logos
echoed without fear of emphasis, while further down,
in the yellow clouds of blossoming crops,
in two facing rows, the statues had fallen silent,
stark naked above death, with nipples erect.
He saw the clouds from the park bench.
and pitched it in the well. Standing with his feet apart,
he pissed, smiling before you did.
I’m speaking about this smile, about night’s spectacles
about the moon’s spectacles. The infant,
no, it wasn’t kidnapped. Nor did there exist
a well or an infant. Only the clouds.
Large shark roam our shore─he said.
At night they’re red like fire. Our children’s
teeth show even through closed mouths. Then
the old woman took the oar; she pitched it underneath the ikons;
she didn’t cross herself; she remained standing. Outside,
the men could be heard sharpening their knives.
The four women could not keep awake.
They stayed at the window; they yawned. Ah─they said─
seeing the mailman in the galaxy.
Her hair fallen over her eyes, her mouth,
she chews at her hair; her saliva whitens.
A great shadow on the curtain. The water glasses on the floor.
Shout it until the end; turn it about, hide it.
Hide what? Hide yourself where? “Death!” she shouted.
“Old age, death!” she shouted, I’ll run away. Hold me back.
A hill strewn with shell fragments. And there,
amid bones, a comb, a red piece of string,
to comb yourself without a mirror now, to bind your hair
that it might not fall over your eyes, that it might not hide from you the white worm
that slimily, serenely, sluggishly crawls up the table.
Cut the lemon and let two drops fall into glass;
look there, the knives beside the fish on the table─
the fish are red, the knives are black.
All with a knife between their teeth or up their sleeves, thrust in their boots or their breeches.
The two women have gone crazy, they want to eat the men,
they have large black fingernails, they comb their unwashed hair
high up. High up like towers, from which the five boys
plunge down one by one. Afterward they come down the stairs,
draw water from the well, wash themselves, spread out their thighs,
thrust in pine cones, thrust in stones. And we
nod our heads with a “yes” and a “yes” ─we look down
at an ant, a locust, or on the statue of Victory─
Pine tree caterpillars saunter on her wings.
The lack of holiness─someone said─is the final, the worst kind of knowledge;
it’s exactly such knowledge that now remains to be called holy.
What was a mountain and afterward air and later a star;
and he who said “Thank you”─said it softly so that
neither the two nor the third might hear it, because they were very angry;
they were throwing their shoes out of the window, their flower pots,
their gramophone records, their water glasses and their napkins
that we might get angry too, that we might shout at them “Don’t!”
and thus give them an excuse for what they’d already done.
In the room next door, with its large iron bed,
we can hear the old man coughing; on his blanket
he has placed a small frog, and for days and nights now,
calm, fasting, ecstatic, he stares at and studies
the soft mechanisms of the frog’s leaping.
Afterward he stops coughing. We hear him jumping on the bed.
On the third day we encased him completely in plaster,
leaving only his toothless grin showing.
Just as he was falling asleep, standing upright in the garden with his back against a tree,
(within himself he could already hear the distant roar of the sunlight)
at the moment he was about to touch serenity with one of his fingers,
they drenched him through and through with a long rubber hose.
he should smile or become angry. But he couldn’t. He closed his eyes again.
They picked him up by his armpits and his feet. They flung him into the wall. And he
heard the thump on the water below, and from above cast down a stone.
They took out the candelabra into the open air under the trees
and scrubbed the church. From the large door
a dark humidity spread out over the steps
and over the white sunwashed tiles. The beadle
kicked a limping dog that had drawn near
to drink water from the bucket. Then, from the beautiful altar door,
the Archangel with his large red wings came out,
stooped to the dog, and gave it to drink out of his cupped hands.
And so the next day the five paralytics walked.
His behavior was all one gesture to drive away the big fly
that doggedly kept returning to the same spot, to his temple,
to his cheek, to his nose. At last he stood still. The fly
also stood still on his cheek, where it sucked his blood and grew larger.
In his place only the fly remained, it too wrapped around
by the spider’s cobweb, where droplets of moisture glittered.
The sky burned desolately behind the house.
Why are you crying?─he asked, buckling his belt.
The world is beautiful─she replied─
so beautiful and such a headache; and the bed
is a silent, savage beast preparing to flee.
The woman was still lying in bed. He
took out his glass eye, set it on the table,
took one step, stopped. Do you believe me now? ─he asked her.
She picked up the glass eye, raised it to her eye and looked at him.
O distant, distant; deep unapproachable; receive always
the silent ones in their absence, in the absence of the others
when the danger from the near ones, from the near itself, burdens
during nights of promise with many-colored lights in the gardens,
when the half-closed eyes of lions and tigers scintillate
with flashing green omissions in their cages
and the old jester in front of the dark mirror
washes off his painted tears so that he can weep-
O quiet ungrantable, you with the long, damp hand,
quiet invisible, without borrowing and lending, without obligations,
nailing nails on the air, shoring up the world
in that deep inaction where music reigns.
In the bedroom, the woman with the black dog.
The old manservant passed by the corridor with a lantern.
Without a stir of air, the curtain moved.
We no longer waited for their return. Their clothes
hanging in the wardrobes grew old. During the night
we heard the messenger stop before the door.
He didn’t ring the doorbell. He didn’t speak. The next day
we found his gold stamped cigarette butts in the garden.
The children have grown. They’ve left.
You no longer wait for an answer. And besides
you have no requests. Unjustly,
for so many years you strove to place
on this paper mask. Close your eyes.
The ones who left were ours. We felt their loss.
The ones who returned are total strangers.
Before, they didn’t wear glasses. Now they do.
One can’t tell whether there are eyes behind their glasses.
We’ll have to look at them asleep,
when their open suitcases in the hallway
inhale the alien air of new underwear,
during that hour when the big street lamp outside is lit,
illuminating the closed doors of stores,
and the impenetrable becomes accessible, because you no longer
The old man sits on the doorsill. Evening. Alone.
He holds an apple in his hand. Others
left their lives under the auspices of stars.
What can you say to them? Night is night.
Nor do we know what is to follow. The moon
endlessly shimmering on the sea. Nevertheless,
within this radiance can be clearly seen
the black double-oared boat with its dark boatman drawing near.
姜 海 舟 / 英 译
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