Haunted Country
Robinson Jeffers (罗宾森.杰费斯)
Here the human past is dim and feeble and alien to us
Our ghosts draw from the crowded future.
Fixed as the past how could it fail to drop weird shadows
And make strange murmurs about twilight?
In the dawn twilight metal falcons flew over the mountain,
Multitudes, and faded in the air; at moonrise
The farmer"s girl by the still river is afraid of phantoms,
Hearing the pulse of a great city
Move on the water-meadow and stream off south; the country"s
Children for all their innocent minds
Hide dry and bitter lights in the eye, they dream without knowing it
The inhuman years to be accomplished,
The inhuman powers, the servile cunning under pressure,
In a land grown old, heavy and crowded.
闹鬼的乡村
译者 / 马祖毅
这儿人类的过去对我们来说模糊、薄弱而异趣
我们的灵魂来自拥挤的未来。
如果像过去那样无法改变,
又怎么能不丢弃奇异的幻影并对晨光作怪诞的私语?
在拂晓的曙光中铁铸般的猎鹰越过高山,
成群结队,尔后消失于空中;月出时刻
在静静的河边的农家姑娘惧怕幽灵,
她听到一个大城市的脉膊
在低平的草地上律动,向南移去;乡村的
孩子们头脑单纯
眼睛里藏着的是不加掩饰的痛苦目光,他们无知梦想
在变得古老而拥挤的土地上,野蛮的岁会被终止
野蛮的权力,压力之下奴性的狡猾亦然。
有几次灾难疏忽的福地,这儿并非其中之一。
残忍发源地的潮汐,生活的
无度和负担像水一般涌流而出,
最后的移民者聚集在比较神圣的谷口
亦预先知道了自己的灾难,发源地的流水
被海洋中比较古老的洪水阻止,要把它吞噬。