1

(1)

我们的时代

Our epoch takes a voluptuous satisfaction

贪求行动，

In that perspective of the action

就如以死亡为友

Which pictures us inhabiting the end

指望我们在万物的终结中现身。

Of everything with death for only friend.

并非因为我们热爱死亡，

Not that we love death,

真的不是，并非颤抖的呼吸，

Not truly, not the fluttering breath,

那最后一幕的可憎战栗——

The obscene shudder of the finished act—

如最终的事实，以血盆大口

What the doe feels when the ultimate fact

撕开母鹿的内脏。

Tears at her bowels with its jaws.

我们喜好在事物终结之前

Our taste is for the opulent pause

做长久的停顿。如果死期已定，

Before the end comes. If the end is certain

我们所有人将是幕终的演员：

All of us are players at the final curtain:

所有人，为被延误的时间默哀，

All of us, silence for a time deferred,

努力寻找最后的悲伤词语:

Find time before us for one sad last word.

受害者，叛逆者，皈依者，禁欲者——

Victim, rebel, convert, stoic—

除英雄之外的任何角色——

Every role but the heroic—

将悲剧的脸转向前排座位，

We turn our tragic faces to the stalls

敛眉蹙额，直到幕布拉上。

To wince our moment till the curtain falls.

2

(2)

当隐喻死亡， 世界也随之终结。

A world ends when its metaphor has died.

一个时代之所以如此，除了其他因素，

An age becomes an age, all else beside,

还因善感的诗人，为博得灵魂的认可

When sensuous poets in their pride invent

发明了引以为傲的象征物。

Emblems for the soul’s consent

它们的意义，只有通过

That speak the meanings men will never know

人类虚构的意象才可指明：

But man-imagined images can show:

当意象失去所指，虽尚苟延残喘，

It perishes when those images, though seen,

这个时代便告消亡。

No longer mean.

3

(3)

当有女子劫持上帝，她的子宫

A world was ended when the womb

成为坟墓，上帝在人子中埋葬，

Where girl held God became the tomb

世界也就寿终正寝。

Where God lies buried in a man:

波提切利的意象闭口不语，也无法

Botticelli’s image neither speaks nor can

向人类言说。他绘制的陌生人

To our kind. His star-guided stranger

为星宿所指引，走向婴孩与马槽，

Teaches no longer, by the child, the manger,

不再昭示天空的意喻。

The meaning of the beckoning skies.

当可敬的演员起身

Sophocles, when his reverent actors rise

扮演双眼流血的国王，①

To play the king with bleeding eyes,

由于不幸的巧合，

No longer shows us on the stage advance

索福克勒斯的舞台不再能

God’s purpose in the terrible fatality of chance.

预言上帝的意图。

No woman living, when the girl and swan

当女子与天鹅在诗歌中结合，②

Embrace in verses, feels upon

世上没有女子能感受到

Her breast the awful thunder of that breast

她胸前的雷鸣。

Where God, made beast, is by the blood confessed.

上帝化身为野兽，以血吐露真相。

Empty as conch shell by the waters cast

如空空的螺壳被海浪推搡，

The metaphor still sounds but cannot tell,

隐喻余音尚存，却已无法给出明示。

And we, like parasite crabs, put on the shell

而我们如寄居蟹，背负着螺壳

And drag it at the sea’s edge up and down.

一遍遍将它拖至大海尽头。

This is the destiny we say we own.

这就是我们亏欠的命运。

(4)

4

But are we sure

但我们何以知道，

The age that dies upon its metaphor

与隐喻一起消亡的时代，

Among these Roman heads, these mediaeval towers,

那罗马的人头，中世纪的塔楼，

Is ours?—

也属于我们？——

Or ours the ending of that story?

或者，我们的时代也有那样的结局？

The meanings in a man that quarry

为理解这个世界，

Images from blinded eyes

人类从盲眼、白鸟、嬗变的天空

And white birds and the turning skies

挖取意象，但因事物遭到遗弃，

To make a world of were not spent with these

它们予人的意义也不复存在。

Abandoned presences.

可历史的进程尚未终止：

The journey of our history has not ceased:

地球总将我们推向东方，

Earth turns us still toward the rising east,

隐喻仍在石头中挣扎，

The metaphor still struggles in the stone,

骨与肉的寓意

The allegory of the flesh and bone

仍注视着夏日的青草。

Still stares into the summer grass

那就是它的酒杯，

That is its glass,

无知的血，仍在

The ignorant blood

叩击寂静，渴求我们的理解。

Still knocks at silence to be understood.

诗人啊，你虽也曾被世界抛却，

Poets, deserted by the world before,

请转身投入现实：

Turn round into the actual air:

发明你的隐喻，创造你的时代。

Invent the age! Invent the metaphor!

译注：

① 指俄狄浦斯王。

② 指丽达与宙斯的传说。