沃尔科特诗选

德里克·沃尔科特（Derek Walcott 1930- ），圣卢西亚诗人。主要作品有《海难余生》（1965）、《海葡萄》（1976）、《星苹果王国》（1979）、《幸运的旅客》（1984）、《仲夏》（1986）、长诗《另一生》、长诗《荷马》（1990）。1992年获诺贝尔文学奖。

另一生（15章）

一

依旧梦见、依旧错过，

尤其在阴雨绵绵的早晨，你的面孔变作

许多张不知名的女学生脸．一种惩罚，

因为有时你屈尊地微笑，

因为微笑的嘴角里合着谅解。

被姐妹们围攻，你是一个

令她们过于自豪的尤物，包围在

她们唇枪舌剑的刺丛中，你招致了

多么严重的不公和多少伤害，安娜？

雨季负重而来。

达倦旅的半年。它腰酸背痈

毛毛雨讨厌地下个不停。

已经二十年了，

在又一场战争后，炮弹箱在哪儿？

但在我们黄铜色的季节，在我们仿造的秋天，

体的头发熄灭了它的火焰，

你的凝视逗留于无数照片中，

时而清晰，时而摹褒，

那追随普遍性的一切

与自然密谋复仇的一切，

巧妙地告密的一切，

在再一行后面，你的欢笑

冻结成一张呆板的照片。

在那头发里我可以穿越俄罗斯的麦地，

你的手臂是成熟坠落的梨，

因为你，实际上，已变成另一故乡。

你是麦田和河坝的安娜，

你是绵绵不断冬雨的安娜，

烟雾缭绕的月台和寒冷火车的安娜，

在那场离别的战争中、蒸汽腾腾车站的安娜，

从沼泽边消失，

从细雨下皱起鸡皮疙瘩的浅滩消失，

新手的诗刚冒芽就经风霜的安娜，

如今有着丰美乳房的安娜，

逗留在冰浴着微笑顶针中的

粗砺之盐的

长腿蹒跚的火烈鸟的安娜，

暗屋里的安娜，在冒着火药味的炮弹箱之间，

抬起我的手要咱俩对她的胸发誓，

难以抗拒的清澈的眼睛。

你是这所有的安娜，忍受着所有的告别，

在你身体这愤世嫉俗的栖所中，

克里斯蒂、卡列尼娜、骨骼粗大而顺从，

我在小说之叶中发现生活

比你更真实，已被选为他在劫难逃的

女主人公。你知道．你知道。

二

那么，你是谁？

我年青的革命的黄金般的战友，我的

饰辨带的、老练的、饱经风霜的政委，

你的背接任务压弯，在阴郁的厨房里，

或挂起洗好的衣服之旗，饲养农场的鸡，

在一片幻想的白桦、

白杨或别的什么树的背景前。

似乎一支笔的眼能捕捉到少女的柔处，

似乎光与影在空白书页上构成的豹斑

能如此准确，

雪一样陌生，

初恋般遥远，

我的阿赫玛托蛙！

二十年后，在炮弹壳的火药味中，

你会使我想起“访帕斯捷尔纳克家”，

于是你突然间成了一个“麦”字，

垂着麦穗，在河坝冷凝的寂静中，

再一次你俯向

白菜园，照料着

白兔一样的雪团，

或从弹唱的晒衣绳上扯下围巾。

如果梦是征兆，

那么此刻必有死亡，

它的气息从另一生命中呼出，

你雪的梦里，从纸

到白纸的飞翔，从跟随这架犁

的鸥和苍鸳中呼出。现在，

你忽然苍老了，两鬓斑白，

象苍鹭，像翻过的一页。安娜，我懂得了

事物会从自身分离，就象脱落的树皮，

向着雷声过后

闪亮的寂静之虚无。

三

“任何岛屿都会使你发狂”，

我早知道你会厌倦

所有海洋的图象

像年轻的风，一个新娘

整天翻阅海洋的

贝壳和海藻图谱，

和一切，这洁白的

一群初次出现的苍鹭，

我在灰色的教堂草地上看见过的

象护士，或圣餐后的年轻修女，

它们眼睛尖，把我挑了出来，

象你的眼睛一样，就那么一次。

你就象苍鹭，

出没于水边，

你渐渐厌倦了你的岛屿，

直到终于，你起飞，

没叫一声，

穿着护士服的新舨依教徒，

多年后我曾想象你

穿过树林朝一所灰色医院走去，

安详的受圣餐者，

却从不“孤寂”，

就象风一样，永不结婚，

你的信仰如折叠的亚麻布，修女的、

护士的亚麻布．

何苦要你现在来读它呢？

没有一个女人会延迟二十年

才读诗。你开始你的召唤，蜡烛一般，

把自己带进伤兵的

黑暗长廊，与患者结婚，

了解一个丈夫，痛苦，

只有苍鸳群，雨水，

石砌教堂，我记得……

另外，还有苗条的处女——新年

刚刚结婚，象一棵白桦

嫁给几滴水晶般的泪，

象一棵弯腰登记的白桦树

她不能为一次闪光而改娘家的姓

她仍然写下l 965而不是1966；

因此，注视这些缄默的

执行圣餐的苍鹭，都在

死者中工作，石砌教堂，石头堆，

我为你做了这些，当

誓言和爱慕衰退

你的灵魂便象苍鹭一样从

盐沼的岛屿草地上飞走

进入另一个天国。

四

安娜答道：

我很单纯，

那时更单纯

正是单纯

显得如此性感。

我能理解什么，

世界吗？光吗？在泥泞海边

的光，

在鸥叫声中

让黑夜入侵的光？

它们对我来说很单纯，

我在它们中部不如

在你心中那样单纯。

是你的自私

把我当作世界来爱，

我那时也是个孩子，象你

一样．但你带来了太多

矛盾的泪，

我成了一个隐喻，但

相信我本是食盐一般的粗糙。

我回答，安娜，

二十年后，

一个人只剩半生，

下半生是记亿，

上半生，在犹豫于

该发生

而未能发生的事，或者

不该发生

而发生在别人身上的事。

全属光泽。她燃烧的紧握。黄铜炮弹箱，

生锈了，黄铜冒着火药味，

大战之后四十一年。黄蝉藤丛中

黄铜的光泽重新擦亮，

从窗口望去，隔着九重葛刺藤的

铁丝网，在阳光映上人字袖章的门廊

我凝视着远方云霞的炮烟

笼罩住被击伤、打哑的岛上山丘，

当她坚定地把我的手拉向“首次”

效在她胸前起伏的摺皱制服上，在一个

紧紧拥抱的沉默中，她——一个护士

我——一个伤兵。曾有过

其他沉默，从没有这么深。曾有过

各种拥有，从没有这么确定。

晨雨 译

火山

乔哀思害怕雷声，

但苏黎世动物园的狮群

却在他的葬礼上咆哮。

是苏黎世，还是的里雅斯德？

这不重要，都只是传说，一如

乔哀思的死也是传说，

康拉德已死，“不朽”不足恃的

满天谣言亦然。

在夜的地平线边缘，

数哩外海上的起货桅

把两道强光投射到

峭壁上的这间海滩小屋，

直到黎明；它们像

雪茄烟的红光，

像“不朽”的尽头

火山的赤焰。

一个人可以为大师们

缓缓燃烧的信号放弃写作，改当

他们理想的读者，沈思默想，

求知若渴，让那份对杰作的爱

凌驾自己企图

再现或超越的冲动，

而成为世间最伟大的读者。

这起码得有一颗敬畏的心--

在这个时代早已荡然无存，

那么多人已博览万物，

那么多人能预卜未来，

那么多人拒绝接受不朽的

沉默，拒绝在核心

慵懒地燃烧，

那么多人只不过像

扬起的灰烬，一如雪茄，

那么多人视雷声为必然，

闪电变得何其寻常，

海上巨物而今何在，

我们竟不再追寻！

那个时代有的是巨人，

那个时代尽生产好雪茄，

我得更加仔细地阅读。

新世界

伊甸园之后，

可还有惊人之事？

有啊，亚当对

第一颗汗珠的敬畏。

从此，一切众生

和盐一同被播种，

去领受季节的棱角，

恐惧和收获，

欢乐--那很困难，

但起码，属于自己。

那条蛇呢？他可不愿在

叉枝的树上生锈。

这条蛇歌颂劳动，

它不会放过他的。

他俩看着树叶

摇白赤杨，

橡树染黄十月，

每样东西都变成金钱。

所以在亚当搭乘方舟

被放逐到我们的新伊甸园时，

新铸的蛇也为敦亲睦邻而

盘绕该处﹔一切早已注定。

亚当有个构想。

为了牟利，他和蛇

分摊伊甸园的损失。

他俩携手共创新世界。看起来挺好的。

灵石岛制作

这些诗都有另外的译本，应该说各有千秋吧。存一下，再对读。

?/P>

Derek (Alton) Walcott (1930-)

The major West Indian poet and dramatist writing in English today. Derek Walcott has lived most of his life in Trinidad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. Walcott has studied the conflict between the heritage of European and West Indian culture, the long way from slavery to independence, and his own role as a nomad between cultures. His poems are characterized by allusions to the English poetic tradition and a symbolic imagination that is at once personal and Caribbean. "Poetry, which is perfection's sweat but which must seem as fresh as the raindrops on a statue's brow, combines the natural and the marmoreal; it conjugates both tenses simultaneously: the past and the present, if the past is the sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on the forehead of the past. There is the buried language and there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of poetry is one of excavation and of self-discovery." (from the Nobel Lecture, 1992) Derek Walcott was born at Castries, St Lucia, an isolated Caribbean island in the West Indies. His father, Warwick, was a Bohemian artist; he died when Walcott was very young. "I was raised in this obscure Caribbean poet," he later wrote in a poem of his family, "where my bastard father christened me for his shire, / Warwick. The Bard's country." Walcott's mother, Alix, was a teacher, born in Dutch St Maarten. She was very well read and also taught her children to love poetry. Walcott educated at St Mary's College, Castries. He received a scholarship to the University College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, where he studied French, Latin and Spanish. His first play, HENRI CHRISTOPHER, was performed in 1950. In 1953 Walcott moved to Trinidad and in 1958-59 Walcott studied theater in New York. In Trinidad he worked for the local newspaper the Trinidad Guardian. Walcott's marriage to Fay Moston, a secretary, broke up after a few years. His second wife, Margaret Maillard, was an almoner in a hospital. In 1976 he married Norline Metivier; the marriage also ended in divorce. From 1953 to 1957 Walcott worked as a teacher at schools on several Caribbean islands. He then started his career as a journalist, writing features for Public Opinion in Kingston and features and drama critics for the Trinidad Guardian. In 1950 Walcott founded the St Lucia Arts Guild. He has worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Boston, and divided his time between Trinidad and the USA. "I sang our wide country, the Caribbean Sea who hated shoes, whose soles were as cracked as a stone, who was gentle with ropes, who had one suit alone, whom no man dared insult and who insulted no one, whose grin was a white breaker cresting, but whose frown was a growing thunderhead..." (from Omeros) As poet Walcott made his debut at the age of eighteen with TWENTY FIVE POEMS, which was privately printed. His widespread recognition as a poet came with IN A GREEN NIGHT (1964). It manifested his primary aims: to create a literature truthful to the West Indian life. In THE FORTUNATE TRAVELLER (1981) and MIDSUMMER (1984) Walcott explored his own situation as a black writer in America, who has become estranged from his Caribbean homeland. The very titles of such books as CASTAWAY (1965) and THE GULF (1969) referred to his feelings of artistic isolation and alienation. St. Lucia, where he was born, belongs to a belt of French-speaking islands. Walcott himself is a native English speaker and bilingual in also speaking Creole, the language of the rural areas. During his trips to the United States and Europe in the 1960s, Walcott made friends with several writers in England and America. In an interview in Walcott said: "But there is still an isolation in the sense that, as West Indian writers, whether we live in London or the West Indies, we are both cut off from and are a part of a tradition." Among the subjects Walcott has continually returned, is the story of Robinson Crusoe, and the multicultural mixture of identities. Walcott has rejected the label of "voice of the Caribbean people", saying: "I'm not even interested in sharing feelings of the people, because those who have been asked to share the feelings of the people are the ones who get shot first." "I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?" (from A Far Cry from Africa, 1962) Walcott's has called himself "a mulatto of style." His most ambitious work is considered the epic poem OMEROS (1990), which takes its title from the Greek word for 'Homer', and recalls the dramas of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in a Caribbean setting. It consist of sixty-four chapters divided into seven books. The central characters are two fishermen, Achilles and Philocrete. Among its subjects are sufferings of exile and the contemporary Caribbean life. The task of the bard is sing of lost lives and a new hope. The Odyssean figure of Shabine in 'The Schooner Flight' expresses his rage against racism and rejection of colonial culture: "I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, / I had a sound colonial education, / I have Dutch, nigger and English in me, / and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation." From 1959 to 1971 Walcott was the founding director of the Little Carib Theatre (later the Trinidad Theatre Workshop). Walcott has written a large number of plays for stage and radio. Of these DREAM OF MONKEY MOUNTAIN was commissioned originally by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1960s but produced finally in the USA. The work is considered to be his most impressive play. Walcott has also collaborated on several musicals with Galt McDermott, best-known from the hippie musical Hair. The Basement Theatre, directed by Walcott, participated in 1967 in Canada's Centennial Celebrations. It was the first West Indian drama company to perform outside the region. Walcott has written both in standard English and in West Indian dialect. His plays examining the postcolonial condition owe much to folk and Creole tradition and history. They combine story-telling, singing, dancing, and the rhythms of calypso with richly metaphorical speech which mingles verse and prose. His autobiographical works include the poem ANOTHER LIFE (1973), inspired James Joyce's self-examination in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. TIEPOLO'S HOUND (2000) was about the painter Camille Pissarro and the poet himself. The book was published with reproductions of Walcott's paintings. Walcott' success has inspired many aspiring Caribbean writers. His twin brother Roderick was a playwright. The death of Roderick was one of the subjects of THE PRODIGAL (2004), which Walcott called his last book.