Billy Collins

诗歌

【美】比利·柯林斯    陈子弘 译

这就是一片旷野
被方舟遗留的动物
暮云苍茫下跑来吃草。

或一个蓄水池, 史前落下的雨
缓缓流过混凝土塄坎。

无论你上看下看，
都没有地方架设
现实主义的三脚画架

或让读者攀爬
一个叙事框架的众多栅栏。

让那肥胖的小说家
用声音嘈杂的打字机
描绘出弗朗辛出生的城市

描绘艾伯特在火车上如何读报
描绘卧室的纱幔是如何被风吹起的。

让剧作家穿她的破羊毛衫
一只狗蜷缩在地毯
从舞台侧翼

挪动那些角色
去面对剧场里众目睽睽的幽暗。

而诗歌不做这个。
我们要做的够多的了
比如抱怨烟草的价格,

递一下滴水的勺子,
给笼子里的鸟儿唱个曲。

我们忙于啥事都不做--
我们要的只是一个下午，
蓝天下的一条小船，

也许还要一个石桥上的垂钓者，或
更美妙的是，桥上渺无踪迹。

诗人简介：比利·柯林斯（William James Collins, known as Billy Collins，1941-）美国诗人，2001至2003年连任两届美国桂冠诗人，被《纽约时报》誉为“美国最受欢迎的诗人”。2016年以杰出教授身份从纽约市立大学莱曼学院退休，他已在此执教50年。1992年柯林斯被授予纽约公共图书馆文学之狮称号，2004年至2006年被选为纽约州诗人。截至2018年，他仍在南安普敦石溪分校的文艺学硕士课程执教。

Poetry

Call it a field where the animals
who were forgotten by the Ark
come to graze under the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell
before history trickles over a concrete lip.

However you see it,
this is no place to set up
the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb
over the many fences of a plot.

Let the portly novelist
with his noisy typewriter
describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,
how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan
and a dog curled on the rug
move the characters

from the wings to the stage
to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is no place for that.
We have enough to do
complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dripping ladle,
and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing—
and all we need for that is an afternoon,
a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,
or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all.

                        Billy Collins