What can I hold you with?
我拿什么才能留住你?I offer you lean streets, desperate
sunsets, the moon of thejagged suburbs.
我给你消瘦的街道、绝望的落日,参差不齐荒郊的月亮。
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has
looked long andlong at the lonely moon.
我给你一个久久望着孤月的人的悲哀。
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living
men have honoured
in marble:我给你我的祖先,我那被生者用大理石祭奠的死者:
my father's father killed in the frontier
of Buenos Aires, twobullets through his lungs,
我父亲的父亲在布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境死去,肺叶被两颗子弹击穿,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers
in the hide of a cow;蓄着胡子倒下,尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起;
my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour-
heading a chargeof three hundred men in Perú,
我母亲的祖父——昔年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋,
now ghosts on vanished horses.
如今是失落的马背上一般的魂灵。I offer you whatever insight my books may
hold. whatevermanliness or humour my life.
我给你我的书中也许有的一切领悟,生活之中有的一切的男子气概与幽默。I offer you the loyalty of a man who has
never been loyal.
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。I offer you that kernel of myself that I
have saved somehow-the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not
withdreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
我给你我所设法保全的我的真心——不营词造句,不与梦交易,不被时间、欢乐或逆境改变的衷心。I offer you the memory of a yellow rose
seen at sunset,years before you were born.
我给你,在你出生多年以前,我在薄暮邂逅那朵黄玫瑰的记忆。I offer you explanations of yourself,
theories about yourself,authentic and surprising news of yourself.
我给你你的解释,你的本来,你真实而惊人的存在。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.我能给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴;我正竭力用犹豫不决、危险、失败来贿赂你。
2016.9.16修改
2015.7.4修改。