狄兰·托马斯诗10首

Children of darkness got no wings

Children of darkness got no wings,

This we know we got no wings,

Stay, dramatic figures, tethered down

By weight of cloth and fact,

Crystal or funeral, got no hope

For us that knows misventure

Only as wrong; but shan't the genius fail,

Gliding, rope-dancing, is his fancy,

Better nor us can't gainsay walking,

Who'll break our necks upon the pavement

Easier than he upon the ice.

For we are ordinary men,

Sleep, wake, and sleep, eat, love, and laugh,

With wide, dry mouths and eyes,

Poor, petty vermin,

Stink of cigarettes and armpits,

Cut our figures, and retreat at night

Into a double or a single bed,

The same thoughts in our head.

We are ordinary men,

Bred in the dark behind the skirting-board,

Crying with hungry voices in our nest.

Children of darkness got no wings,

This we know, we got no wings,

Stay, in a circle chalked upon the floor,

Waiting all vainly this we know.

Youth Calls to Age

You too have seen the sun a bird of fire

Stepping on clouds across the golden sky,

Have known man's envy and his weak desire,

Have loved and lost.

You, who are old, have loved and lost as I

All that is beautiful but born to die,

Have traced your patterns in the hastening frost.

And you have walked upon the hills at night,

And bared your head beneath the living sky,

When it was noon have walked into the light,

Knowing such joy as I.

Though there are years between us, they are naught;

Youth calls to age across the tired years:

'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?'

'What you have found,' age answers through his tears,

'What you have sought.'

Being but men

Being but men, we walked into the trees

Afraid, letting our syllables be soft

For fear of waking the rooks,

For fear of coming

Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,

Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,

And, after the soft ascent,

Thrust out our heads above the branches

To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,

And the wonder that man knows,

Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,

Children in wonder watching the stars,

Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.

The midnight road

The midnight road, though young men tread unknowing,

Harbouring some thought of heaven, or haven hoping,

Yields peace and plenty at the end. Or is it peace,

This busy jarring on the nerves yet no outbreak?

And this is plenty, then, cloves and sweet oils, the bees' honey,

Enough kind food, enough kind speaking,

A film of people moving,

Their hands outstretched, to give and give?

And now behind the screen are vixen voices,

The midnight figures of a sulphurous brood

Stepping in nightmare on a nightmare's edges.

Above them poise the swollen clouds

That wait for breaking and that never break,

The living sky, the faces of the stars.

Their faces shone under some radiance

Their faces shone under some radiance

Of mingled moonlight and lamplight

That turned the empty kisses into meaning,

The island of such penny love

Into a costly country, the graves

That neighbored them to wells of warmth,

(And skeletons had sap). One minute

Their faces shone; the midnight rain

Hung pointed in the wind,

Before the moon shifted and the sap ran out,

She, in her cheap frock, saying some cheap thing,

And he replying,

Not knowing radiance came and passed.

The suicides parade again, now ripe for dying.

The almanac of time

The almanac of time hangs in the brain;

The seasons numbered, by the inward sun,

The winter years, move in the pit of man;

His graph is measured as the page of pain

Shifts to the redwombed pen.

The calendar of age hangs in the heart,

A lover's thought tears down the dated sheet,

The inch of time's protracted to a foot

By youth and age, the mortal state and thought

Ageing both day and night.

The word of time lies on the chaptered bone,

The seed of time is sheltered in the loin:

The grains of life must seethe beneath the sun,

The syllables be said and said again:

Time shall belong to man.

Your pain shall be a music

Your pain shall be a music in your string

And fill the mouths of heaven with your tongue

Your pain shall be

O my unborn

A vein of mine

Made fast by me.

Your string shall stretch a gully twixt the thumbs

Whose flaming blood shall rub it at the rims

Your pain shall be

O my unsown

A ragged vein

Twixt you and me.

Your pain shall be a meaning in your lips

As milk shall be a music in the paps

Your pain shall be

O my unknown

A stream of mine

Not milked by me.

Your pain shall not unmilk you of the food

That drops to make a music in your blood

Your pain shall be

O my undone

Flesh blood and bone

Surrounding me.

From love's first fever to her plague

From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second

And to the hollow minute of the womb,

From the unfolding to the scissored caul,

The time for breast and the green apron age

When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,

All world was one, one windy nothing,

My world was christened in a stream of milk.

And earth and sky were as one airy hill,

The sun and moon shed one white light.

From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting

Hand, the breaking of the hair,

And to the miracle of the first rounded word,

From the first secret of the heart, the warning ghost,

And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,

The sun was red, the moon was grey,

The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.

The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,

The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed

Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,

And the four winds, that had long blown as one,

Shone in my ears the light of sound,

Called in my eyes the sound of light.

And yellow was the multiplying sand,

Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,

Green was the singing house.

The plum my mother picked matured slowly,

The boy she dropped from darkness at her side

Into the sided lap of light grew strong,

Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh

And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,

Itched in the noise of wind and sun.

And from the first declension of the flesh

I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts

Into the stony idiom of the brain,

To shade and knit anew the patch of words

Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,

Need no word's warmth.

The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,

That but a name, where maggots have their X.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;

The code of night tapped on my tongue;

What had been one was many sounding minded.

One womb, one mind, spewed out the matter,

One breast gave suck the fever's issue;

From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,

The two-framed globe that spun into a score;

A million minds gave suck to such a bud

As forks my eye;

Youth did condense; the tears of spring

Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;

One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.

从赤足的第一行脚印，举起的手，

散乱的头发，

到首轮词语的非凡神奇，

从内心最初的秘密，预警的幽灵，

到第一次面对肉体时的默然惊愕，

太阳鲜红，月亮灰白，

大地和天空仿佛是两座山的相遇。

身体渐趋成熟，牙髓里长出牙齿，

骨骼在生长，神圣的腺体里

精液谣言般流窜，血液祝福心脏，

四面来风，始终如一地刮个不停，

我的耳朵闪耀声音的光芒，

我的眼睛呼唤光芒的声音。

成倍增加的沙子一片金黄，

每一粒金沙繁衍成生命的伙伴，

颂唱的房子呈现绿意。

母亲采摘的梅子慢慢地成熟，

男孩从母体的黑暗中降生，

在明亮的膝下日趋健壮，

结实匀称，善于腿脚的啼哭，

善于发出声音，如饥饿的声音，

渴望风和太阳的喧闹。

从肉体的首次变格

我牙牙学语，学会将思想扭曲成

脑海里冷酷的词语，

重新修饰并编排前人遗留的

片言只语，在月光消逝的大地，

他们无需言语的温暖。

舌根在消耗殆尽的癌变中消亡，

空留虚名，只为蛆虫留下印迹。

我学会表达意愿的动词，拥有自己的秘密；

夜晚的密码轻叩我的舌面；

聚为一体的心智发出响亮不绝的声响。

一个子宫，一种思想，喷涌自身的内涵，

一只乳房触发吮吸的狂热；

从分离的天空，我学会了双重的涵义，

双重的世界旋转为一次积分；

万千思想吮吸同一朵花蕾

犹如刀叉在眼前绽放；

青春无比浓郁；春的泪水

在夏天和成百的季节里消融；

一个太阳，一种甘露，带来温暖和养分。

In the beginning

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,

One smile of light across the empty face;

One bough of bone across the rooting air,

The substance forked that marrowed the first sun;

And, burning ciphers on the round of space,

Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,

Three-syllabled and starry as the smile;

And after came the imprints on the water,

Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;

The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail

Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire

That set alight the weathers from a spark,

A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower;

Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,

Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock

The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word

That from the solid bases of the light

Abstracted all the letters of the void;

And from the cloudy bases of the breath

The word flowed up, translating to the heart

First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.

The brain was celled and soldered in the thought

Before the pitch was forking to a sun;

Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,

Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light

The ribbed original of love.

诗歌已死。贝里曼自己也是一位诗人，他真的这样说过吗？对于这点的记载并不清楚。这也许只是传闻而已。不过，1953年11月9日那天，他的确在曼哈顿圣∙文森特医院床边，且情绪过度紧张；因此如果他真的这样说过，他的话——正如沃尔福德∙戴维斯（Walford Davies）在他那关于狄兰·托马斯的出色研究新编中指出的那样——“已经不仅仅是部传奇剧了”。 麦克∙卢汉（Marshall McLuhan）并未给予我们什么标准，可是倘若狄兰是个媒介，那么他的诗歌就是讯息。二十世纪五十年代，在浪漫主义的蠢蠢悸动与即将到来的大众传媒繁荣的碰撞之际，在那个受大众喜爱的英国广播电台上，在齐柏林飞艇乐队（Led Zeppelin）式的阅读之旅和城市道路的宣传等一系列活动中，他早已在全美声名远播了。这名威尔士人是电子媒体的名人，他那所汇集起来凌乱的个人形象所散发出来的各种亮点和讯息都诠释了他诗人的身份。讲经台上那打着蝴蝶结的小丑，低音吟唱走调；狂欢会后的放荡不羁；朝那盆栽中撒尿；定期到酒馆喝喝小酒，侃侃而谈几个小时，到处称兄道弟；雕琢着他那深沉而又遍地鳞伤的缄默；火尾鸟般的诗人；彗星似的凯尔特人。所有这些都是狄兰的形象，所有这些都体现在他的诗歌中，即使在他死后，这些都陪伴在他左右。他之所以是最后一位摇滚诗人，是因为当真正的摇滚诗人出现时——电流的嗡鸣声、药物作用下的鼻音声——诗人会变成为一个矛盾体。

然后是诗歌本身。在这点上，在他的百年周年纪念，对于狄兰的诗篇，我们是作何感想的呢？他那伟大的后期作品并不是那么完美。索然无味的《蕨山》（Fern Hill）；《不要温和地走进那个良夜》（Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night）里对死神将可爱的人们带离这个世界的愤怒。他早期的素材更是不可能，一个年纪轻轻的人，他那沸腾激涨的朝气和他那源源不断的词藻——都使我黯然失色。倘若你确信他会再看诗歌，你可以把这类的诗歌给不读诗歌的读者看。与此同时，旋动的微观机制节拍、双声叠韵和内韵，托马斯所有这些富有盛名的艺术技巧现在看来是有点疯狂的作品。（他的诗好似一个患了强迫症的布谷钟，午夜时分，诗人自会蹦出来吹嘘一声。）

我真的讨人嫌。可是我确实带着伤痛写出来的：对于少年时代的我来说，托马斯是个奇才；在中年时期，自负的我再次遇见了他，对于他60%不可读、朴实无华的诗歌，我感到震惊、恼火。我们残缺的梦想，在光明前均无果而终。这诗歌究竟讲的是什么呢？他如何使我如此神魂颠倒呢？好吧，可以用他这样的诗句来表达：尽管他们疯狂，像硬瘤一般僵死，一个个人物的头颅在雏菊丛中崭露。（此句出自狄兰的诗歌And Death Shall Have No Dominion）这听起来很优美，两句悦耳的陈词滥调——像硬瘤一般僵死、在雏菊中崭露——这些都传达出了诗人直视死亡的胜利姿态。希薇亚·普拉斯（Sylvia Plath）这样写道，“热血喷发才是诗歌”，“所向披靡，不可阻挡。”对于狄兰来说，诗歌就是“通过绿色导火索催开花朵的力量”（出自狄兰的诗歌 The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower）——多美的诗句！那种产生出来热湿的嘶嘶声，那种表达的灵光一现，他把自己献给了艺术。在某种程度上，他的诗歌一无是处。他的诗歌错综复杂、富有音律、时而欢快明亮时而触目惊心，都在诉说我现在活着，很快我将死去，这才是诗歌。

这是你、我、整个美国对这位诗人作出的回应。这一个魅力四射的男人，活力四射的男孩，摇头晃脑天使般的巨魔，嘴里叼根烟、口袋里装着褐色啤酒瓶从伦敦到斯旺西摇摇摆摆地一路走来。爬过威尔士那笨重坚硬的地壳/我极为震惊。捷克小说家简∙德尔达（Jan Drda）于1949年间陪同狄兰游历布拉格，他发现狄兰“看起来并不是一点都不能走路，他欢欣雀跃、嬉戏打闹，还向空中抛出一只小熊娃娃，这是他印象最深刻的。”狄兰的状态总是喝酒、喝酒再喝酒；写诗、不写诗；放荡不羁；奄奄垂绝。大声朗读他的诗作，让人如痴如醉；朗读他人的诗作，却又让人茅塞顿开。然而，事实又不总如此：他录制爱德华∙托马斯（Edward Thomas）的诗作“鸮”（The Owl）的录音就像米特洛夫（Meatloaf）朗诵史蒂维∙尼克斯（Stevie Nicks）的诗作“山崩”（Landslide）一样。但是狄兰给人有点重金属般感觉，就像劳伦斯录制（D. H. Lawrence）的“鲸鱼不哭！”（Whales Weep Not!）一样的语调感情抚平了听众。

在他三十几岁的时候，他的名望达到了全盛时期，但是他的诗歌、魄力、精力却干涸了。1952年，他对采访他的时代周刊记者坦承，他六年里只写了六首诗。他并不是思维停滞，而是他已筋疲力尽了。是不是他挥霍自己的天赋呢？自1943年，他就开始为英国广播公司工作（BBC）“写脚本”和“广播播报”，还要制作另外100种广播，其中包括“散文作家沃尔特·德·拉·米尔瑞（Walter de la Mare as a Prose Writer）”以及讲述自己的故事。这些都使他无法进行他“真正的”工作——诗歌创作。

可是天生我才必有用，事实是狄兰在他的拙作和受雇工作之间重新创造了另一种风格：颠覆性的超级散文诗歌，爱吹牛和灵活变通，反吟游诗人，他那欣喜中带点逆流的讽刺诗集离经叛道。现在他没有写作，我看到了涔涔泪下的疲惫/在阴阳交汇的黄昏。他书写着“走在黄昏汇总城镇，马伊玫瑰村舍（Mae Rose Cottage），依然静卧在三叶草上，聆听母山羊的吃草声，在她那乳头上转动着唇膏。”这是他最后一篇伟作的诗句《牛奶树下》（Under Milk Wood）的“演奏之声”。一个威尔士村民睡着了，他梦到了上帝、两性和杀戮；一个威尔士村民醒来，清晨在病态的地下河上漂浮着，我们都是如此。这种新的语言——他的文学作品和对话书信的语言如此相近：已经可以被大多数人理解。

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