博尔赫斯：我拿什么留住你
我用什么才能留住你？
我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落
破败郊区的月亮。
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
我给你我已死去的先辈
人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵：
在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，
绪着胡子的他死去了，
士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；
我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，
如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我给你我写的书中所包含的一切悟力、
我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心
——不营字造句，不和梦想交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我给你你对自己的解释，
关于你自己的理论，
你自己的真实而惊人的消息。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；
我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。
What Can I Hold You With?
Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze:
my father's father killed in the frontier of
Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
--just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow --the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落
破败郊区的月亮。
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
我给你我已死去的先辈
人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵：
在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，
绪着胡子的他死去了，
士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；
我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，
如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我给你我写的书中所包含的一切悟力、
我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心
——不营字造句，不和梦想交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我给你你对自己的解释，
关于你自己的理论，
你自己的真实而惊人的消息。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；
我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。
What Can I Hold You With?
Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze:
my father's father killed in the frontier of
Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
--just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow --the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
