失去

【美】爱丽丝·富尔顿　陈子弘 译

你感到极端的空虚
占据了上风
而世界化作闪光的
石英，皱缩、翻卷
像租来的电影幕布。
空气嗡嗡作声：那
金色风扇环绕圣人头顶，
电动的并且高悬，
定是从你脊椎升起。
在你嘴唇触地之前，
你看出这剥离
还想讨价还价，恳求上天
宽恕这沦陷，但发现你自己
被打发了。迷路

曾是种冒险。孩提时
你与和蔼的小姨玩过这游戏，
随意登上一辆引擎噗哧作响的巴士，不管
其会开往何方。小姨特别留意着
转车，是为了让你安然
回家。如今她身在何处，
还有她稳重冷静与运筹帷幄？
而你的大脑沦为一座污水和垃圾
淹没掉的拜占庭大教堂。
它的壁画、记忆和彩纸屑
坠入泥泞的凡尘。
从光线勾勒、骨架分明的穹顶
被禁锢的灵魂俯视着。

你醒来时呆若木鸡
像从萝卜车上掉下来
坠入新黑暗时代。
包裹你双腿那条石化的河流，
想必是你的裙子。
今天几月？几号？医生问。
尴尬中，你把厚书一般
重如墓碑的答案拖到嘴边。
“我不知道，”你低语道。

如果大脑是身体，
你的脑会肌无力
光溜溜站着。
麻木的黏液
蔓延数个街区，
而你什么都没有
除了用一根棉签
来擦拭一下。
床头上，他的头
搁在了光的
盘子上，像一个
裹薄纱纱笼的
苗条姑娘，基督沉入
蓝色长毛绒十字架。
痛苦从未如此不真实。
英勇却又是装饰性的，
他正是我们希望
死亡呈现的模样。
他多么好地体现了我们
对客套的需求。氧气
如香槟般美味。你意图
表达这昏暗的顿悟。
你想要
纵情狂躁的过往，
但思绪徐徐叹息像电梯
从一层到另一层。
而词语……词语是从水汽结晶
而成的雪花。

窗外，夕阳
把吸管插入树木，
啜饮它们的绿意。
这一次你很幸运。
你没失去什么
可说一说的：一种联系，一种观看方式。

回想发生的一切，你可想象
大脑如拜占庭大教堂一样，污水塘
和垃圾桶里面的东西充斥这里。
它的壁画、记忆和彩纸屑
坠入泥泞的凡尘。
从光线勾勒、骨架分明的穹顶
被禁锢的灵魂俯视着。

随后你抛弃了这洪流，
它曾是一种安慰；放下了
灵魂的泛宗教浪漫。
剩下的——是一种
严格属于“前任”与“非”的状态，
非此、非彼，失去的最高
境界：吞噬一切的虚无
我不得不躲到
第二人称后面去谈论它，
仿佛我在谈论另一个

人。我记得母亲
把小姨最好的蓝睡衣
叠放在她重症监护室
梳妆台的空抽屉里。
若灵魂存在，它不过是
种粘腻的人造丝外壳，
折叠成层层织物时
几乎会紧缩成虚无。
从健康与自控的高地，我命令她：
“用劲。”她的眼睑被乙醚麻醉了，
她挣扎着服从。
我紧握住打小起就没
再握过的手，我想
不顾一切，恳求她醒来。
回来吧，无论你去往何方，
我内心的声音在呼唤。

译注：
1.小姨，原文aunt是一个广义的称谓，可以指父母的姐妹（姑姑、姨妈）或父母兄弟的妻子（伯母、婶婶、舅妈）。然而，在描述亲戚关系时，通常默认指与自己有血缘关系的直系亲属，即父母的姐妹。故此处也可以写为姨妈、姑姑。
2.萝卜车，原文用的turnip，中文的意思指芜菁、萝卜和大头菜等圆根蔬菜，这个词在俚语的用法中直接表示愚蠢、白痴、智商有限。
3.痛苦从未如此不真实（Pain was never so fey）此处fey太多义了，比如有超自然的、妖精般的、注定要死的、古怪的，甚至虚弱的、病态的等等不一而足，结合上下文译者认为富尔顿此处强调的是非真实性/虚幻性、超脱感以及人工加工的美感。
4.失去的最高境界，原文为the ne plus ultra of losing track，作者在此处直接用了拉丁语短语ne plus ultra，意思是无与伦比、无可超越。

诗人简介：爱丽丝·富尔顿（Alice Fulton，1952- ）当代美国诗人、小说家。她是康奈尔大学的安·鲍尔斯英语荣休教授，获得的奖项包括美国艺术与文学学院文学奖、美国国会图书馆Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt国家奖和Ingram Merrill基金会奖，以及麦克阿瑟奖学金。

ALICE FULTON

Losing It

You feel a hardcore blankness
gain the upper hand
while the world turns to glittering
silica, crinkles and rolls
up like a rented movie screen.
The air whirrs: surely
the golden fan that halos saints’ heads,
electric and on high,
is rising from your spine.
Before your lips hit the floor
you recognize divestment
and want to dicker, please heaven,
with the slippage, but find yourself
dismissed. Getting lost

was once adventure. As a kid
you and a kindly aunt played at it,
boarding any bus that puffed along, no matter
where it went. Your aunt was mindful
of the transfers, which saw you home
intact. Where is she now
with her calm tokens and cerebral maps?
When your brain’s become a Byzantine cathedral
flooded with the stuff of sump and dumpster.
Its frescoes, memories, confetti
into the mortal sludge.
From domes filleted and bone
with light, the impounded soul looks down.

You wake up dumb
as something fallen off a turnip truck
into a new Dark Age. That petrified
river round your legs must be your skirt.
What month? What day? the doctor asks.
Mortified, you lug the answer, a book
dense as a headstone, to your lips.
“I don’t know,” you whisper.

If brain were body
yours would be unmuscled
and standing in the buff.
The ooze of stupefaction
extends for blocks,
and you have nothing
but a cotton swab
with which to mop it up.
Above the bed, like a sylph
in a filmy sarong,
his head on a plate
of light, Christ sinks
into a blue plush cross.
Pain was never so fey.
Heroic, yet decorative,
he is the way
we wish death to be.
How well he embodies our need
for pleasantry. The oxygen is delicious
as champagne. You wish
to express this dim epiphany.
You'd like to
binge on the fidgety past,
but thoughts sigh slow as elevators
from cell to cell.
And words...words are snow
crystals to be grown from vapor.

Outside, the setting sun
dips a straw into the trees
and drinks their green.
This time you are lucky.
You've lost nothing
to speak of: a contact, a way of seeing.

Thinking back on what happened, you imagine
the brain as Byzantine cathedral, flooded
with the stuff of sump and dumpster.
Its frescoes, memories,
confetti into the mortal
sludge. From domes filleted
|and boned with light, the impounded soul
looks down.

Then you discard the flood,
which was a kind of comfort; let go
the pan-religious romance of the soul.
What's left—a state
that’s strictly ex- and un-,
not-this, not-that, the ne
plus ultra of losing
track: A nothing so engulfing
I had to hide behind
the second person to address it,
as though I spoke of someone

else. I remember my mother
folding my aunt’s best blue pajamas
on the empty drawer of her
dresser in intensive care.
If there’s a soul it’s such
a clingy rayon casing,
deflating almost to absence
when creased in layers of tissue.
From the high ground of health
and self-control, I issued orders to
Try. Her lids, pinned by ether,
strained as she complied.
Squeezing a hand I hadn’t
held since childhood, I wanted to forget
myself and beg her to awaken.
Come back, no matter
where you're headed,
the voice inside me said.

                  from Epoch