I
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
corner; I have outlived
the night.
Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
laden with all
the hues of deep spoil, laden with
things unlikely and desirable.
Nights
have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
of things half given away,
half withheld,
of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
that way, I tell
you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
and odd ends:
some hated friends to chat
with, music for dreams, and the smoking
of
bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart
has no use for.
The big
wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
and
incessantly beautiful. We talked and you
have forgotten the words.
The
shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
of my city.
Your profile
turned away, the sounds that go to
make your name, the lilt of your
laughter:
these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them
over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
them; I tell them to the few stray dogs
and
to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life …
I must
get at you, somehow; I put away those
illustrious toys you have left me, I
want your
hidden look, your real smile — that lonely,
mocking smile your
cool mirror knows.
II
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.
Ps、原版英文、话说18的时间真二、
