题图 / Brooke DiDonato

电话年代

有些姿势一去不复返了。
一个是拿起台式电话
用两只手指
把听筒挂在小搁架上，
电话不用时听筒静置于此。
要想走几步，你得把电话揽在怀中，
显出一种精心安排的坐立不安，却感觉良好：
你挪动了一个坚固的物体
这可不简单。你打着手势，电话也在手中，
或者顶在腰上。既非你莫属，又漫不经心。

电话铃声的打扰，未知的致电者，
曾是日子里的小戏剧。我们盼望它们出现。
其它无非是不知所谓的时辰，翻过的书页。
电话铃响起之间心脏的滴答作响。

如果是女性，她会把卷曲的听筒线缠在腰上，经过肘部，沿胳膊而上
于是螺旋部分拉扯得很长，听筒
被脖子紧紧夹住，专注于它的职责——
言说与倾听，口与耳的好伙伴。
也许一边交谈一边伫立窗边。
彼此联系的小愉悦，一种亲密感
对交谈主题，或是另一头倾听的人
虽然他看不见。

你们俩谁也不说话时的停顿
是活的，充盈四周，似乎真实存在着。

你能听到一个个房间。
对话扎根于它们，
无法四处走动。
你知道另外一个房子里还有生命——关门声，
晚饭铃声，门铃声，在便签本上涂写，能够辨认主人的手写字，
有人离开房间，再未回来。
有人可能吓你一跳——他们来自电话打不到的远方。

我不是说那时的生活就更好，
但在那时，我们之间的通话像一场戏剧。
说再见，就
不知何时再见。

作者 / [美国] 德博拉·加里森
翻译 / 马丁格

Telephone Years

There are gestures that have been lost.
One was picking up a desk phone
Using a couple of fingers
To snag it under the little shelf where the receiver
Rested when it was not in use;
You’d carry the phone with you if you needed to pace,
Perhaps with a studied restlessness that felt good:
You were removing a solid object from its position
And that had meaning. You gestured with it in hand,
Or held it against your hip. Something both possessive and devil-may-care in it.

The disruption of a ring, the caller unknown,
Was one of the day’s small dramas. We lived for them.
There were hours unaccounted for, pages turned.
Ticking of the heart between rings . . .

A feminine variant was to wear the curling receiver cord
Sashed across your waist, over the elbow, up the arm
So the curls were stretched long, the receiver
Tight-tucked in the neck hollow and pinned to its job—
To speak and to hear, companion of both mouth and ear.
Maybe standing while talking, at a window.
A light pleasure in the binding, an intimacy
With the subject or the person listening
That he couldn’t see.

And the pauses when neither of you spoke
Were alive, space-filling, somehow physical.

You could hear rooms.
Conversations were rooted in them.
They didn’t move around.
You knew there was life in another house—doors slammed,
Supper bells, doorbells, messages scratched on pads, handwriting that told,
People who left rooms and never came back.
People who might surprise you, come from so far there was no phoning them.

I don’t mean that life was better then,
But our conversations were theatre.
Farewell, until
You didn’t know when.

Deborah Garrison

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怀念慢时代的诗作不少，比如《从前慢》，主旨都差不多，但这首诗打动我在于细节——从怎样用手指拿起听筒，到电话线缠在女性腰间的画面，从怀抱电话机手舞足蹈的心情，到透过听筒揣测另一侧人生的好奇，你知道，那就是我们了。

那时的电话本是真实存在的，听筒那头的人间和你这头的一样，鸡零狗碎热气腾腾。在电话响起的一瞬猜测来电者的身份，是一天中的小游戏，也是无聊时光里的小高潮。

“我不是说那时的生活就更好，但在那时，我们之间的通话像一场戏剧。”“theatre”也许翻译成舞台更好，在细细的电话线搭起的舞台上，有自己和对方，也有素未谋面的他者；有相谈的欢喜，也有物理距离与时间之隔带来的怅惘。

在手机和网络年代其实也有类似的舞台，毕竟作为人类的我们对于与他人联系的渴望并没有因为联系方式变得容易而减少一分，拉黑功能的存在更是让再见更有可能成为永别。只是诗里描绘的一些姿势的确一去不复返了。

荐诗 / 马丁格
2019/11/07

第2434夜

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