配图 / Walter J. Philips

给初恋的诗

你对我说“我爱你”，可以说是我
生命中的高光，最美好的感觉，
情感图表上的最佳峰值，
就像克莱斯勒大厦
可能不是纽约天际线上最高的建筑，但却是
最美丽、最精致的尖顶，或者像
汉克·阿伦的本垒打总数虽然不是最高，
但却是最好的，体现出纯粹的伟大。
这是多么不可思议！能够遇见你，
然后在认识你不久后，
你用柔和年轻的声音告诉我：“我爱你。”
我感受到那种神秘，
你存在，
而我被你爱着，瞬间变成了
可以被像你这样的人说“我爱你”的人。
在那一刻，我是崭新的；你19岁；我22岁；
你激情澎湃；我就在你面前，拥有一个
尚未被当作木柴燃烧的未来；我充满活力；
你拥有美丽；你的眼睛是浅蓝色的，
阅世未深的它们支持着你所说的一切，
它们是我所见过的最单纯，最与世无争的眼睛，
而当你说话时，
你的眼睛闪烁，也许你看到了你所引发的感觉。
也许你也看到了这种感觉将会萦绕在我心中。

作者 / [美国] 马修·耶格尔
译者 / 光诸

Poem to First Love 

To have been told “I love you” by you could well be, for me,
the highlight of my life, the best feeling, the best peak
on my feeling graph, in the way that the Chrysler building
might not be the tallest building in the NY sky but is
the best, the most exquisitely spired, or the way that
Hank Aaron’s career home-run total is not the highest
but the best, the one that signifies the purest greatness.
So improbable!  To have met you at all and then
to have been told in your soft young voice so soon
after meeting you: “I love you.”  And I felt the mystery
of being that you, of being a you and being
loved, and what I was, instantly, was someone
who could be told “I love you” by someone like you.
I was, in that moment, new; you were 19; I was 22;
you were impulsive; I was there in front of you, with a future
that hadn’t yet been burned for fuel; I had energy;
you had beauty; and your eyes were a pale blue,
and they backed what you said with all they hadn’t seen,
and they were the least ambitious eyes I’d known,
the least calculating, and when you spoke and when
they shone, perhaps you saw the feeling you caused.
Perhaps you saw too that the feeling would stay.

Matthew Yeager