週三 9月 07, 2005 9:39 am
Speaking In Tongues by Mary Rose O'Reilley
I go to church every Sunday
though I don’t believe a word of it,
because the longing for God
is a prayer said in the bones.
When people call on Jesus
I move to a place in the body
where such words rise,
one of the valleys
where hope pins itself to desire;
we have so much landscape like that
you’d think we were made
to sustain a cry.
When the old men around me
lift their hands
as though someone has cornered them,
giving it all away,
I remember a dock on the estuary,
watching a heron get airborne against the odds.
It’s the transitional moment that baffles me—
how she composes her rickety
grocery cart of a body
to make that flight.
The pine siskin, stalled on a windy coast,
remembers the woods
she will long for when needs arise; so
the boreal forest composes itself in my mind:
first as a rift, absence,
then in a tumble of words
undone from sense, like the stutter
you hear when somebody falls
over the cliff of language. Call it a gift.
用語言說話
我每個星期天都上教堂
雖然我半個字也不相信,
只因為對上帝的渴求
是打骨子裡來的禱告。
當大眾呼喊著耶穌基督的時候
我遊離到身體的一角
那裡這樣的說話升起。
其中的一個山谷
在那裡希望與慾望掛鉤;
我們有太多相類的地形
你會想我們生來是
為了持續號哭。
當圍繞我的老人們
舉起雙手
像被人窮追
被迫放下慾望。
回想在河口的一個碼頭,
觀察一隻蒼鷺起飛
雖然可能性很小,
離地升空的一瞬使我困擾-
她究竟怎樣擺平搖晃的
雜物小拉車般的身體
去升空飛行呢
松樹林的金翅雀, 被阻於刮風的海岸,
當有需要時
她會想起渴求的樹林; 因此
北方的森林在我心中成形;
起初像裂谷, 一無所有,
然後是雜亂的字堆,
由官能中釋放出來, 結結巴巴
的說話, 像有人
從語言的懸崖下墜。人們稱之為天才。 2005/9/7 譯
I go to church every Sunday
though I don’t believe a word of it,
because the longing for God
is a prayer said in the bones.
When people call on Jesus
I move to a place in the body
where such words rise,
one of the valleys
where hope pins itself to desire;
we have so much landscape like that
you’d think we were made
to sustain a cry.
When the old men around me
lift their hands
as though someone has cornered them,
giving it all away,
I remember a dock on the estuary,
watching a heron get airborne against the odds.
It’s the transitional moment that baffles me—
how she composes her rickety
grocery cart of a body
to make that flight.
The pine siskin, stalled on a windy coast,
remembers the woods
she will long for when needs arise; so
the boreal forest composes itself in my mind:
first as a rift, absence,
then in a tumble of words
undone from sense, like the stutter
you hear when somebody falls
over the cliff of language. Call it a gift.
用語言說話
我每個星期天都上教堂
雖然我半個字也不相信,
只因為對上帝的渴求
是打骨子裡來的禱告。
當大眾呼喊著耶穌基督的時候
我遊離到身體的一角
那裡這樣的說話升起。
其中的一個山谷
在那裡希望與慾望掛鉤;
我們有太多相類的地形
你會想我們生來是
為了持續號哭。
當圍繞我的老人們
舉起雙手
像被人窮追
被迫放下慾望。
回想在河口的一個碼頭,
觀察一隻蒼鷺起飛
雖然可能性很小,
離地升空的一瞬使我困擾-
她究竟怎樣擺平搖晃的
雜物小拉車般的身體
去升空飛行呢
松樹林的金翅雀, 被阻於刮風的海岸,
當有需要時
她會想起渴求的樹林; 因此
北方的森林在我心中成形;
起初像裂谷, 一無所有,
然後是雜亂的字堆,
由官能中釋放出來, 結結巴巴
的說話, 像有人
從語言的懸崖下墜。人們稱之為天才。 2005/9/7 譯