题图 / Marie-Louise Ekman

没有名字

我能告诉你些什么？那是一个似乎创造了历史的夏天——他们个人的历史——这几乎始于夏天开始之前，他们退后一点，并未退出它的范围，但是已经可以观察它，说“这个夏天这样”，“这个夏天那样”，而此时夏天还在继续。比如说，他们被那个喷泉迷住，每天他们都要路过它，每每看到它把如此大量的水喷向空中，然后又浇到它自己身上——在冬天里这个喷泉是干的，一语不发。我还能告诉你些什么？噢，所有事——比如他们会在华灯初上的时候走回家，空气拥有着他们，呵护着，温存地抚摸着他们，有时急切，有时轻柔，只是让他们知道它还在那里，他们在想或许活着的感觉就是如此，当他们看到树木是多么繁复，它是多么希望他们看它并且谈论它的繁复，看到某种花在某个时刻是那样的红，那色彩似乎压倒了生命的力量，不管生命的力量是什么，如果你可以打开它并且深入它，如果你可以用嘴唇碰触它，变得像那朵玫瑰一样红艳，那朵花仍然比它更红，他们并不知道如何处置自己，所以他们没有做任何事，除了倾听他们头脑中的歌声，这些歌是悲伤的，就像所有好歌一样，看着这种感觉逐渐浸入，阳光还是阴雨，我们还未知晓，它是好的，它是最好的，虽然它还没有名字。

作者  / ［美国］埃米莉·贝瑞
翻译 /  光诸

No Name

What can I tell you? It was a summer that seemed to be making history–their personal history–almost before it began, and they stood back slightly, still in it, but observing it, saying “the summer this,” “the summer that,” all the while it was going on. They became obsessed with a fountain, for example, one they walked past each day, how abundantly it would reach upwards and yet be pouring back down itself the whole time–all winter this fountain had been dry, not saying a word. What more can I tell you? Oh, everything–like how they would walk home in the evenings when the light was soft, anything bad sliding off them, and they would feel owned, completely owned, in a good way, by the air, which would touch them constantly, sometimes urgently, sometimes lightly, just to let them know it was there, and they would think maybe this is what being alive is, when they saw how complicated a tree was and how it wanted them looking at it and saying this, how the color of a particular flower at this particular moment was redder even than the life force, whatever that is, if you could open it up and get right down inside it, if you could put your mouth to it and become as red as that rose even, it was still redder than that, and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves so they wouldn’t do anything except listen to the songs in their heads which were sad ones like nearly all good songs and watch this feeling rolling in, sunshine or rain, we don’t know yet, it’s a good one, it’s the best one, though it has no name.

EMILY BERRY

这是一首甜到忧伤的诗。然而诗中文字给人的第一印象并不是“甜”，而是“晕乎”。英文中充满了“it”,“that”，很难确定它们指代的是上一句里的什么东西，诗人显然故意为之——在恋爱中的人就是一直处于“晕晕”的状态。诗中赋予了平常的事物——喷泉和花朵极其重要的位置，这也符合恋爱的感觉——日常的事物突然焕发出别样的光辉。

真正让我惊异的是诗中主人公的沉着。生命中最美好的时刻到来了，可是却没有人说透，听凭它在“没有名字”的状态中过去。难道两个人另有牵挂？诗中并没有这种忧伤。或许，在诗人生活的那个地方，日子过得还很慢，一生只够爱一个人。

荐诗 / 光诸（微信号：ghostinthezoo）
2019/08/12

第2343夜