词法

【美】埃莉诺·威尔纳      陈子弘  译

用英语问：它是何意？
用意大利语问：那要怎么表达它？
我以意大利语方式问，这赋予词以欲望。
大脑皮质想如何被表述。它从昏睡中
蹒跚而来 ，到了水边，饱饮，
然后摇摆，在水中划出宽阔的波纹，在弧线上
捕捉到阳光。然而，在诗歌课上。
导师问起这个图景：“它意味着什么？”
而且啊，现已颇有点吨位的大象
又想要脱离减重队列的大象，
正沿着陡峭的小径
要去天空侵入山峰的所在，
它把自己包裹在云中，那种朦胧
警惕的大象愿意沉溺其中
当追踪到它的巢穴时。
                                                           而在那里，
在悬崖边，靠近巨石，云层
飘进飘出，在林木线之上飘逸。
一个大词，挽歌，翼展九英尺，
想说成是一只兀鹰，一只从灭绝
中救出来放归自然的兀鹰。
它在灰云边的悬崖上安顿
下来，云被理解为一头大象，
无论看起来多么模糊。这头兀鹰，
就是一种鹫，粉红色皮肤又肮又皱
还有冰冷的眼睛，但却敏感又相当
热心，乐意在这个安全天地与大象
打成一片，这儿话语可以随意说出——随心
或重或轻：又如云一样沉重却
轻盈，或翱翔着搜寻死物。

【诗人简介】埃莉诺·威尔纳（Eleanor Wilner，生于1937年）是当代美国诗人和文学编辑。她曾任《美国诗歌评论》编辑，《花萼》杂志顾问编辑，曾于芝加哥大学、西北大学和史密斯学院任教。她是沃伦-威尔逊学院作家硕士课程的指导老师。2019年，她获得了罗伯特·弗罗斯特奖章，这是美国诗歌协会颁发给“为美国诗歌提供了杰出的终身服务”的奖项。

OF A WORD

By Eleanor Wilner

English asks: What does it mean?
Italian asks: How does it want to be said?
I ask in the way of Italian, which gives to words desire,
how gray matter wants to be said. It lumbers
up from drowse, makes its way to water, fills its trunk,
then swings it, making of water a wide arc, in which
the sunlight is caught. Meanwhile, in the poetry class,
the instructor asks of the image: “What does it mean?”
and the elephant, which by now is a tonnage
that wants to get out of the range of reduction,
is making its way up the steep trail
of the mountain to where sky invades the peaks,
where it wraps itself in cloud, the kind of obscurity
that a wary elephant is willing to indulge in
when tracked back toward its lair.
                                                           And up there,
on the cliffside, near where the clouds are drifting
in and out of the boulders, far above the tree line,
a large word, elegy, with a nine foot wing span,
wants to be said as a condor, one saved from
extinction and recently released to the wild.
It settles down on a bluff next to the gray
cloud which it understands as an elephant,
however obscure it appears. The condor,
who is a vulture of sorts, has dirty pink wrinkled
skin, and a cold eye, but is sensitive and quite
warm-hearted, and is pleased to consort with
the elephant in this safe aerie, where words
are said as they wish to be said—weighty or
winged as they please: heavy but light as
clouds are, or soaring in search of the dead.