Sylvia Plath
1932.10.27－1963.02.11
“I desire the things
which will destroy me in the end.”
西尔维娅·普拉斯，美国自白派诗人的代表。继艾米莉·狄金森和伊丽莎白·毕肖普之后最重要的美国女诗人。出生于美国麻萨诸塞州的波士顿地区。1955年，普拉斯以优异成绩毕业于史密斯女子学院，之后获得富布赖特奖学金去英国剑桥大学深造，并在那里遇到了后来成为桂冠诗人的特德·休斯，两人于1956年6月结婚。1960年，普拉斯出版了她的第一部诗集《巨神像及其他诗作》（The Colossus and Other Poems）。不久，因丈夫有外遇婚姻出现问题，1962年离异。1963年2月11日，在伦敦的寓所自杀身亡。普拉斯死后出版的诗集包括《爱丽尔》（Ariel），《涉水》（Crossing the Water）等以及唯一的一部小说《钟形罩》（The Bell Jar）。1982年获追颁普利策文学奖。
Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
每个人都点着四四方方的黑脑袋，他们是面盔下的骑士，Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers --The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.Their smiles and their voces are changing. I am led through a beanfield.Strips of tinfoil winking like people,Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hatAnd a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.Is it the hawthorn that smells so sick?The barren body of hawthon, etherizing its children.Is it some operation that is taking place?It is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,This apparition in a green helmet,Shining gloves and white suit.Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts meWith its yellow purses, its spiky armory.I could not run without having to run forever.The white hive is snug as a virgin,Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.If I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,A gullible head untouched by their animosity,Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.While in their fingerjoint cells the new virginsDream of a duel they will win inevitably,A curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,The upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.The villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.The old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?I am exhausted, I am exhausted --Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.The Arrival of the Bee BoxI ordered this, clean wood boxSquare as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.I would say it was the coffin of a midgetWere there not such a din in it.The box is locked, it is dangerous.I have to live with it overnightAnd I can't keep away from it.There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.There is only a little grid, no exit.I put my eye to the grid.With the swarmy feeling of African handsMinute and shrunk for export,Black on black, angrily clambering.It is the noise that appalls me most of all,The unintelligible syllables.Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!I lay my ear to furious Latin.I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.I wonder how hungry they are.I wonder if they would forget meIf I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,And the petticoats of the cherry.They might ignore me immediatelyIn my moon suit and funeral veil.So why should they turn on me?Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.The box is only temporary.Bare-handed, I hand the combs.The man in white smiles, bare-handed,Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,The throats of our wrists brave lilies.Have a thousand clean cells between us,Eight combs of yellow cups,And the hive itself a teacup,White with pink flowers on it,With excessive love I enameled itThinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'Brood cells gray as the fossils of shellsTerrify me, they seem so old.What am I buying, wormy mahogany?Is there any queen at all in it?Her wings torn shawls, her long bodyPoor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.Of winged, unmiraculous women,Though for years I have eaten dustAnd dried plates with my dense hair.And seen my strangeness evaporate,Blue dew from dangerous skin.These women who only scurry,Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover?Here is my honey-machine,It will work without thinking,Opening, in spring, like an industrious ******To scour the creaming crestsAs the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.A third person is watching.He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.Here is his slipper, here is another,And here the square of white linenHe wore instead of a hat.The sweat of his efforts a rainTugging the world to fruit.Molding onto his lips like lies,Complicating his features.They thought death was worth it, but IHave a self to recover, a queen.Is she dead, is she sleeping?With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?More terrible than she ever was, redScar in the sky, red cometOver the engine that killed her --The mausoleum, the wax house.This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.I have whirled the midwife's extractor,Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,Wintering in a dark without windowAt the heart of the houseNext to the last tenant's rancid jamand the bottles of empty glitters --This is the room I have never been inThis is the room I could never breathe in.The black bunched in there like a bat,But the torch and its faintChinese yellow on appalling objects --Neither cruel nor indifferent,This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the beesSo slow I hardly know them,To make up for the honey I've taken.Tate and Lyle keeps them going,It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.They take it. The cold sets in.Mind against all that white.The smile of the snow is white.It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,Into which, on warm days,They can only carry their dead.Maids and the long royal lady.They have got rid of the men,The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.The woman, still at her knitting,At the cradle of Spanis walnut,Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.Will the hive survive, will the gladiolasSucceed in banking their firesWhat will they taste of, the Christmas roses?The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
