配图 / Carroll Cloar

坟墓

你们觉得我的新眼镜怎么样？
我站在树荫下问道
在我父母的坟墓前

回答我的是一片长久的沉默
笼罩着一排排死者
和更远处的树林与田野，

据说中国人的信仰里，
有100种沉默
每一种都区别于其他，

那些微妙的差异
只有少数几位特别的僧侣
能将它们全部区分开来。

它让你看起来很有学问，
我听到母亲这么说
当我躺倒在地

一只耳朵贴近柔软的草坪。
然后我翻了个身，
把另一只耳朵贴在地面，

我父亲喜欢对着说话的那侧耳朵，
可他什么都不肯说，
我找不到那种沉默

在中国的100种沉默中
应该有一种匹配他所创造的
即使我就是那个人

刚刚编造了这件事
有关中国的100种沉默——
夜船的沉默

莲花的沉默，
寺庙钟声之沉默的近亲
只是更加深沉、柔和，就像花瓣，在它最远处的边缘。

作者 / [美国]比利·柯林斯
翻译 / Reeta 杨

Grave

What do you think of my new glasses
I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence
according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks
were able to tell them all apart.

They make you look very scholarly,
I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,
but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the 100 Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business
of the 100 Chinese silences-
the Silence of the Night Boat

and the Silence of the Lotus,
cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

Billy Collins