他瞌睡点头，从睡到醒，又为睡而睡
I P N H K 2 0 1 7
約翰·伯恩塞
John BURNSIDE
约翰?伯尔尼塞（英国），圣安德鲁斯大学创意写作教授，苏格兰重要的当代作家，著有多本诗集、小说集和回忆录。他的第一本诗集The Hoop（1988）获苏格兰艺术委员会书奖，Feast Days（1992）获Geoffrey Faber纪念奖，The Asylum Dance（2000）获 Whitbread诗歌奖。2012年凭诗集Black Cat Bone获T.S.Eliot诗歌奖和Forward年度诗集奖。2017年发表小说Ashland & Vine及诗集Still Life with Feeding Snake。
哀悼随笔（节录）
给卢卡斯
III.1979年自画像
“无论是甚么痛苦，他不能在一度怀疑，
而且日渐荒唐的世界，重获心满意足。”
——辛克莱·刘易斯
仿佛他有一个巴比伦可以失去
仿佛他有多年的母爱被冲刷走
他假装皮肤是别出心裁的
一种成熟延迟得刚刚好
让他记住雨水；
虽然不能持续，这段
关于凝结的床单
还有冰毒的叙述
是他在《男孩人生》中所知的一切
不会发出肉冻或公平竞赛的恶臭
没有人在那里告诉他：心脏
主要是油脂和肌肉，家
比起长居之所更像出租屋，
而夏天来得太早，干叶
在尘土中变成粉末，污水坑
在后街结成硬块，被头发堵塞。
在城市最远的边缘，
动物在血与夜的畜栏里
被打晕，成为汉堡的肉扒
使游人长胖，肥满白净，
花言巧语如情景戏剧中的顶嘴。
破晓时分，唇上有冧酒和香水，
他瞌睡点头，从睡到醒，又为睡
而睡，直到火车渐渐减速
走在一段火绒色树丛边上，光
与雾飞快略过草地和所有
常见的垃圾，玻璃樽碎片，
旧啤酒罐，报纸纸捻，塑料网布。
有一会儿，他在自己的气息中唱
“总有出路”——关于
骨头软腐的记忆。倏然
他想再要同样事物，同样的话，同样的目光，
同一首老歌中同样的结局完好的故事
“总有出路”，毕竟，
他知道，来世
有这样的人
精于引导门诊病人回到病房
打开台灯，城市终于退却了
门锁中的钥匙轻轻转动
他必须相信
当他致欣喜若狂的时候
他会知道自己一向所爱的是甚么。
V.尾声：假洋红
我们玩死亡的游戏
好像在克拉科夫的小公寓楼
逐渐消失的降雨，
——我想我们必须知道
是来自电影——
不是那种长出
紫藤的地方，虽然鸽子的声息中
有点甚么让我们再次想起
去年的金子。
然后它变暗了。被践踏的叶子和雪
像吗哪般的结痂，靡废在花竹柏的花冠上。
只消一只狼就令森林
再次变大，少许檀香木
拆解雀鸟的语法，楼梯上的行李箱，
那么，然后，剪报中，狗儿清醒
货运车箱空虚，霜和石灰，一切都明亮起来。
（郑政恒 译）
An Essay on Mourning（Extracts）
for Lucas
III Self Portrait in 1979
Whatever the misery, he could not regain
contentment with a world which, once
doubted, became absurd.
— Sinclair Lewis
As if he had a Babylon to lose
or years of mother love to wash away,
he makes believe the skin is fanciful,
aripening delayed just long enough
to memorise the rain;
and though it cannot last, this narrative
of curdled sheets
and methamphetamine
is all the Boy’s Own Life he’s ever known
that doesn’t stink of aspic or fair play.
No one is there to tell him that theheart
is mostly grease and muscle, home
more rented room than permanent abode;
and summer comes too early, dry leaves
powdered in the dust, the cesspits
crusting in the backstreets, clogged with hair.
Away, on the thin edge of town,
stunned animals go down into a fold
of blood and night to make the burger meat
the tourists fatten on, obese and white,
but slick with sitcom sass.
At daybreak, rum and perfume on his lips,
he dips from sleep to waking, sleep
to sleep, until the train slows on a stretch
of brush and tinder, light
and fog streaked through the grass and all
the usual rubbish, chunks of bottle glass,
old beer cans, spills of newsprint, plastic scrim.
For a moment, under his breath, he sings,
there must be some way out— a memory
of soft scald at the bone, and all atonce
he wants the same again, same words, same gaze,
the same good story from the same old song
—there must be some way outand, after all,
he knows they have people for this
in the great beyond,
experts in luring the out — patient back to his cell,
and lighting a lamp, the city receding at last
while the key in the lock turns so softly,
he has to believe
he will know what he loved all along,
whenit comes to the Rapture.
V Coda: Fake Cochineal
We played the game of dying like the fade
of rainfall in a small apartment block
in Cracow
— which I think we must have known
from motion pictures —
not the kind of place
to grow wisteria, though something in the sound
the pigeons made would make us think again
of last year’s gold.
And so it darkened. Trampled leaves and snow
like scabs of manna, wasting in a crown
of butcher’s broom.
It only took one wolf to make the forest
large again, a splash of sandalwood
to parse a finch, a suitcase on the stairs,
then, later, in the cutting, wakeful dogs
and empty boxcars, bright with frost and lye.
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