On the morning she became a young widow,

在她成为年轻寡妇的那天早上，

my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,

我的祖母，被突然出现的阴影吓了一跳，

looked up from her work to see a hawk turn

从她的工作中抬起头来，看到一只鹰转向

her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.

她所珍爱的公鸡变成了一团羽毛。

That same moment, halfway around the world

同一时刻，在世界的另一边

in a Minnesota mine, her husband died,

在明尼苏达州的一个矿场，她的丈夫死了，

buried under a ton of rockfall.

被埋在一吨落石下。

She told me this story sixty years ago.

六十年前她告诉了我这个故事。

I don’t know if it’s true but it ought to be.

我不知道它是不是真的但它应该是。

She was a hard old woman, and though she knelt

她是一个坚强的老妇人，尽管她跪了下来

on Sundays when the acolyte’s silver bell

在主日，当侍祭的银铃

announced the moment of Christ’s miracle,

宣布基&督奇迹的时刻，

it was the darker mysteries she lived by:

这是她赖以生存的更深的奥秘：

shiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside,

猫头鹰颤抖的叫声，路边的黑狗，

a tapping at the door and nobody there.

一阵敲门声却没人在那儿。

The moral of the story was plain enough:

这个故事的寓意很明显:

miracles become a burden and require a priest

奇迹成为一种负担，需要一位神&父

to explain them. With signs, you only need

解释它们。有了征兆，你只需要

to keep your wits about you and place your trust

保持警觉，将你的信赖放在

in a shadow world that lets you know hard luck

一个阴影世界，它让你知道厄运

and grief are coming your way. And for that

和悲伤正向你走来。为此

—so the story goes—any day will do.

——故事是这样的——任何一天都可以。