(1)

1

Our epoch takes a voluptuous satisfaction

我们的时代

In that perspective of the action

贪求行动，

Which pictures us inhabiting the end

就如以死亡为友

Of everything with death for only friend.

指望我们在万物的终结中现身。

Not that we love death,

并非因为我们热爱死亡，

Not truly, not the fluttering breath,

真的不是，并非颤抖的呼吸，

The obscene shudder of the finished act—

那最后一幕的可憎战栗——

What the doe feels when the ultimate fact

如最终的事实，以血盆大口

Tears at her bowels with its jaws.

撕开母鹿的内脏。

Our taste is for the opulent pause

我们喜好在事物终结之前

Before the end comes. If the end is certain

做长久的停顿。如果死期已定，

All of us are players at the final curtain:

我们所有人将是幕终的演员：

All of us, silence for a time deferred,

所有人，为被延误的时间默哀，

Find time before us for one sad last word.

努力寻找最后的悲伤词语:

Victim, rebel, convert, stoic—

受害者，叛逆者，皈依者，禁欲者——

Every role but the heroic—

除英雄之外的任何角色——

We turn our tragic faces to the stalls

将悲剧的脸转向前排座位，

To wince our moment till the curtain falls.

敛眉蹙额，直到幕布拉上。

(2)

2

A world ends when its metaphor has died.

当隐喻死亡， 世界也随之终结。

An age becomes an age, all else beside,

一个时代之所以如此，除了其他因素，

When sensuous poets in their pride invent

还因善感的诗人，为博得灵魂的认可

Emblems for the soul’s consent

发明了引以为傲的象征物。

That speak the meanings men will never know

它们的意义，只有通过

But man-imagined images can show:

人类虚构的意象才可指明：

It perishes when those images, though seen,

当意象失去所指，虽尚苟延残喘，

No longer mean.

这个时代便告消亡。

(3)

3

A world was ended when the womb

当有女子劫持上帝，她的子宫

Where girl held God became the tomb

成为坟墓，上帝在人子中埋葬，

Where God lies buried in a man:

世界也就寿终正寝。

Botticelli’s image neither speaks nor can

波提切利的意象闭口不语，也无法

To our kind. His star-guided stranger

向人类言说。他绘制的陌生人

Teaches no longer, by the child, the manger,

为星宿所指引，走向婴孩与马槽，

The meaning of the beckoning skies.

不再昭示天空的意喻。

Sophocles, when his reverent actors rise

当可敬的演员起身

To play the king with bleeding eyes,

扮演双眼流血的国王，①

No longer shows us on the stage advance

由于不幸的巧合，

God’s purpose in the terrible fatality of chance.

索福克勒斯的舞台不再能

预言上帝的意图。

No woman living, when the girl and swan

Embrace in verses, feels upon

当女子与天鹅在诗歌中结合，②

Her breast the awful thunder of that breast

世上没有女子能感受到

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

她胸前的雷鸣。

上帝化身为野兽，以血吐露真相。

Empty as conch shell by the waters cast

The metaphor still sounds but cannot tell,

如空空的螺壳被海浪推搡，

And we, like parasite crabs, put on the shell

隐喻余音尚存，却已无法给出明示。

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

而我们如寄居蟹，背负着螺壳

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

The age that dies upon its metaphor

但我们何以知道，

Among these Roman heads, these mediaeval towers,

与隐喻一起消亡的时代，

Is ours?—

那罗马的人头，中世纪的塔楼，

Or ours the ending of that story?

也属于我们？——

The meanings in a man that quarry

或者，我们的时代也有那样的结局？

Images from blinded eyes

为理解这个世界，

And white birds and the turning skies

人类从盲眼、白鸟、嬗变的天空

To make a world of were not spent with these

挖取意象，但因事物遭到遗弃，

Abandoned presences.

它们予人的意义也不复存在。

The journey of our history has not ceased:

可历史的进程尚未终止：

Earth turns us still toward the rising east,

地球总将我们推向东方，

The metaphor still struggles in the stone,

隐喻仍在石头中挣扎，

The allegory of the flesh and bone

骨与肉的寓意

Still stares into the summer grass

仍注视着夏日的青草。

That is its glass,

那就是它的酒杯，

The ignorant blood

无知的血，仍在

Still knocks at silence to be understood.

叩击寂静，渴求我们的理解。

Poets, deserted by the world before,

诗人啊，你虽也曾被世界抛却，

Turn round into the actual air:

请转身投入现实：

Invent the age! Invent the metaphor!

发明你的隐喻，创造你的时代。

译注：

① 指俄狄浦斯王。

② 指丽达与宙斯的传说。