Xat…

光

C. K. Williams

过于短促的阵雨后，又一个干燥的清晨，
枯萎枫树的叶子上，无数银色的闪光——

我想像一队被祝福了的喜悦的但丁逐渐走近，
“一百个闪亮的圆球，”他吟诵道，“最纯净的珍珠……”

然后我想到我的灯盏里，那骇人而灿烂的万道光芒
想起我曾在一个洞穴里，发现的那一大群蝙蝠的眼睛，

一个房间，墙壁上涌动着一张无限的生命挂毯
它们的尖叫长啸，刺耳、热切、坚持不懈、持续不断

搅动那温暖、恶臭、潮腻的空气；我记起其中一只
在所有其它阵阵抽动的蝙蝠中，保持全然静止，

直直地望着我，从它皮质翅膀的错综的
绒毛后，若有所思，庄严地凝视着

仿佛不能相信我在那里，或者它试图认出我
要把我放到我们由之进化来的环节上，而如今，

树木仍在悲伤地闪烁，但丁再一次吟诵，
这次提起他遇见的，他说的是“那生命⋯⋯”

不是灵魂，或某人，是生命，那蝙蝠的，和我的生命
那一刻再次聚在一起，我们的生命，我们的生命，

他的，没有灿烂天体的景象，没有诗歌，
我的，没有飞翔，没有黑暗中敏捷的冲撞，

他的，无法意识到自身将迅速不复存在，
我的，不得不了解对我俩而言，一切终将结束

世界，来生，甚至他们的记忆，烟消云散
像最后一场甘霖蒸腾的变幻无常的水雾一般。

LIGHT

C. K. Williams

Another drought morning after a too brief dawn downpour,
uncountable silvery glitterings on the leaves of the withering maples—

I think of a troop of the blissful blessed approaching Dante,
“a hundred spheres shining,” he rhapsodizes, “the purest pearls…”

then of the frightening brilliant myriad gleam in my lamp
of the eyes of the vast swarm of bats I found once in a cave,

a chamber whose walls seethed with a spaceless carpet of creatures,
their cacophonous, keen, insistent, incessant squeakings and squealings

churning the warm, rank, cloying air; of how one,
perfectly still among all the fitfully twitching others,

was looking straight at me, gazing solemnly, thoughtfully up
from beneath the intricate furl of its leathery wings

as though it couldn’t believe I was there, or were trying to place me,
to situate me in the gnarl we’d evolved from, and now,

the trees still heartrendingly asparkle, Dante again,
this time the way he’ll refer to a figure he meets as “the life of…”

not the soul, or person, the life, and once more the bat, and I,
our lives in that moment together, our lives, our lives,

his with no vision of celestial splendor, no poem,
mine with no flight, no unblundering dash through the dark,

his without realizing it would, so soon, no longer exist,
mine having to know for us both that everything ends,

world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away
like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain.