1

1

I-for two days deprived of sleep

我——有兩天沒睡好覺

Mind tied in knots. Soon I may have to vomit

內心糾葛。等一下可能會嘔吐

I sit on one of the station's marble benches

火車站一排大理石座椅上

Reading a paperback-with Borges inside

我看著小書——裏面有波赫士

-maybe in him

——或許他

Or in my luggage

和我的行李

I can take comfort

——可以安慰我

Tears brim to a line of text

我的淚淹到一行字上

But do not drip. They do not lightly

但沒有滴下。它們不輕易

Roll from me. I have stored up a whole reservoir

離開我。我儲存了一整座水庫

Enough to last me for years

夠用好幾年

My eyes are getting bad these days

最近眼睛壞得可以壞到

Getting bad enough to understand Borges

壞到

Soon the train will pass by the ocean

等一下火車將經過你居住的

Where you live. I will see you. I am in your heart

海洋。我將看到你。懷中有我

This is squeezing water out of my very bones

把我的骨頭磨出水來

Wish I could go back home

我很想回家

But people in the station are more like kinfolk

但火車站每個人更像親人

Wish I could stand up and smile at them

我想站起來向他們微笑

But nobody bothers me

但沒有人打擾我

In my secret way

我秘密地

I unfold my wings

把翅膀展開

2

2

Weeping is a form of self-rescue

啼哭是一種自救

The train starts moving

火車開了

Tears are on the window

Moving down in lines

淚滴到窗上

Some will not run readily,

一行一行

Like the kind of pain

有的不太合作

That proceeds in stages

好像有些疼痛分段

進行

On my own I am more long-suffering

Than the sky above. The sky sobs out loud

獨自一人時比天空

Without wetting the suitcase

堅強。天空放聲大哭

但沒有打濕行李

What is in the suitcase: candle,

Notebook, Dickinson. The nineteenth century

行李中有何物：蠟燭

And myself, pressed in each other's palms

筆記本。狄菫遜。我和

十九世紀。互相捏在手心

3

Today would be hard to describe as blessed

3

Cold damp air, no hunger in the gut

今天不能叫做幸福——

冷。潮濕。肚子不餓

Could be worse. The sky looks dusky, dimmed down

As if retreating to the eighteenth century

還好。天有點昏暗。暗得

像退回到十八世紀

Having no radio. No lightbulb

Chilly drafts left by the night watchman

沒有收音機。燈泡

打更者剛留下幾道霜風

Lantern shaded in red. Wilted almond petals falling

Kindling set alight, boil a bowlful of thin noodles-

燈籠是紅色。杏花殘落

柴火點燃，下了碗細麵條——

Ink stone frozen in the master's study

Careless servant sent away

主人書房裏的硯凍著——

To borrow a fiber-tip pen

粗心的奴僕被打發

In the twenty-first century

到二十一世紀

借一隻快筆——

He stumbled upon a new name

Tried on a pair of jogging shoes

他撿到一個新名字並且

The master would not recognize

穿上主人不認識的

慢跑鞋

4

The train is not in the mood to be quiet

4

We are all drumming up noise for each other

火車不肯安靜

大家互相鼓動噪音

Only one kind of animal is allowed

(-other animals prohibited-)

只允許一種動物

To fly about outside

(——其他動物被禁止——)

在外面飛翔

Over there at a dead end, Ruan Ji stands crying

Soon he will encounter a train

另一頭的阮籍哭著

(-trains like to run on roads that hit dead ends-)

快和火車相遇了

(——火車喜歡走上窮途——)

All of us are acting crazy

Saying there is a tavern up ahead

大家裝瘋賣傻

The barmaid comes from the third century

說前面有一個酒窖

賣酒的娘子來自第三世紀

At times she notices subtle things

Pays heed to details of fermentation

某些時候她觀察入微

特別重視釀酒的細節

You can lie down drunkenly beside her

(-poets line up along the whole train-)

你可以醉倒在她身旁

She is able to translate each line of your body

(——一整排火車都變成詩人——)

As long as it smells of wine

她會一一翻譯你身上

有酒味的詩句

5

On the train we keep reading-

5

"Quagmire" is a word I like

我們在火車上讀著——

「淤泥」這個字我喜歡

Can reality be surmounted?

The sound of a washing machine

我們能超越現實嗎

Is like "Mantra of the Constricting Headband"

洗衣機的聲音

像緊箍咒

What machine do you think is capable

Of dissolving contradictions?

還有一種機器——能消解

On the train we must listen

矛盾嗎

To steel slamming on steel bars

Pounding one against the other-

我們必須在火車上

聽鋼條互相碰撞

Has the universe gotten too narrow?

傾軋傾軋——

How does a thing get buried?

Put the train out of mind

宇宙太狹小了嗎

如何掘地便埋

Set out from the very beginning-this nothingness

把火車輕忽

Has been built up

Into a giant monster

從最初出發——這個虛無

被建構

Until this sturdily fashioned frame

成龐然大物

Comes undone-

(One word I like

這個土木形骸

Is "quagmire")

拆碎之後——

(淤泥這個字——

6

我喜歡)

Today we will go bounding over a ravine

(another day spent)

6

今天將飛躍山溝

Leaping past a cliff

(又過了一天)

(another day spent)

飛躍懸崖

Leaping over an abyss

(又過了一天)

(another day spent)

飛躍深淵

End of a century

(又過了一天)

Just another day

Start of a century

世紀末

Just another day

是一天

世紀初

7

也是一天

Our intimacy: exchange of looks

Without words. In the darkness

7

Unaccustomed breathing

我們的親密關係：無言的

互望。黑暗中

Rain falls on passing window

陌生的呼吸

Glass. Commas splash inside,

Sentences are pasted all over the wall

雨打在路過的玻璃

窗上。逗點跑進來

Our passenger train-lit on fire

句子貼滿牆壁

Slices the dusk apart

At every stop it grabs up poets

列車—著火了

When the subject is one’s home district

正在切碎黃昏

Where does one begin?

從每個不同的站抓來詩人

A poet of the sixth century

故鄉是要

Mulls over fine points of prosody—

從何說起呢

The countenance wavers

第六世紀的詩人

But there is cochineal rouge

推敲音韻——

And an oil lamp

As well as—

容貌飄搖

但是有胭脂

Who will go and bring back a few mosquitos

有油燈

That mosquito net—

還有——

Bring back my grandparents

誰去找回那幾隻蚊子

8

那頂蚊帳——

Sudden evidence of existence: a hermit

Wearing a headscarf of black—

找回祖父母

Whorled spruce boughs, or a brushwood door

8

In a snowscape, burning

一種存在的突顯：隱士

黑色的頭巾——

My heart churning along, hidden

In these mountains

渦狀的雲杉，還是雪中的

柴扉，在燃燒——

Once the sky stops spinning—every leaf

Floats down

我的心臟滾動，藏匿

在這座山中——

Reach out to catch a branch tip

天翻地覆之後——葉子

A juvenile beast goes rambling—my servant boy

落盡

Tremulously clutches a seven-string qin

伸手接住了樹枝——

Follows my steps along the path

Winding up and down

幼小的獸漫行——我的

童僕，脆弱地挾一具琴

A waterfall—my main artery

Comes gushing down

順著我的腳印，山路

蜿蜒

(Noisy fracas of twentieth-century ideologies)

我的主要動脈——瀑布

Crossing over this trestle bridge

傾瀉而下

My donkey brays out loud

(二十世紀各種主義喧嘩——)

A reminder—while I pass through a fourth-century landscape

跨過這座木橋

It brays to let me know:

我的驢子嘶鳴

This is what you can expect of a body

提醒我——正走過第四世紀的山水

What else besides it

Could make me icy cold

牠將說

And shivery?

身體就是這麼回事

9

還有什麼——

Cooking smoke. Heartbeat of a village

能使我冰涼而

To speak of eternity shames us

顫抖

Yet it is found therein

9

The word “wilderness”—this is my

炊煙。村子的心跳

Home district

我們羞於啟齒的永恆

I think of Baudelaire and Plath

都在其中

Dickinson and Tsvetaeva

「野」這個字——是我的

I feed a charcoal fire. From red to black

故鄉

From gray to white—

我想起波特萊爾。普拉斯

I watch over a stove

狄菫遜。茨維塔耶娃

—Task without a reason

我添加炭火。由紅而黑

10

由灰而白——

In a time of hibernation

Father’s seat is empty

我守著爐灶——

——無原因的任務

I turn to the other side

To the train that is Mother

10

Her voice is low and grating

冬眠的時候

父親缺席

The person who coughs

Stands between us—

我走到另一邊

母親是火車

We ride past the ocean

喉嚨低啞

Kinfolk see each other once a year

咳嗽的人

We can’t help but drink liquor, crack melon seeds

站在中間——

Once we pass a certain stop

Children begin playing

我們經過海洋

親人一年見一次面

We need children terribly

To make offerings. Keep diaries

不得不喝酒。嗑瓜子

小孩子在某一站

Our throats are terribly scratchy

開始遊戲

All attention on a single point—

我們非常需要小孩

Squeeze out some tears

祭祀。寫日記

Throw them into the ocean—

我的喉嚨非常癢

Within the body—

所有的注意力集中——

把眼淚擠出

丟進海洋——

身體內部——