The Light Keeper

A night without ships. Foghorns calling into walled cloud, and you
still alive, drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks,
darkness once crusted with stars, but now death-dark as you sail inward.
Through wild gorse and sea-wrack, through heather and torn wool
you ran, pulling me by the hand, so I might see this for once in my life:
the spin and spin of light, the whirring of it, light in search of the lost,
there since the era of fire, era of candles and hollow wick lamps,
whale oil and solid wick, colza and lard, kerosene and carbide,
the signal fires lighted on this perilous coast in the Tower of Hook.
You say to me stay awake, be like the lens maker who died with his
lungs full of glass, be the yew in blossom when bees swarm, be
their amber cathedral and even the ghosts of Cistercians will be kind to you.
In a certain light as after rain, in pearled clouds or the water beyond,
seen or sensed water, sea or lake, you would stop still and gaze out
for a long time. Also when fireflies opened and closed in the pines,
and a star appeared, our only heaven. You taught me to live like this.
That after death it would be as it was before we were born. Nothing
to be afraid. Nothing but happiness as unbearable as the dread
from which it comes. Go toward the light always, be without ships.

© Carolyn Forché
录制: Haus für Poesie / 2016

灯塔

没有船舶的夜晚。雾笛向积云鸣响,你
仍然活着,被光吸引,仿佛僧侣守护的一团火。
黑夜曾经与群星纠结,现在同死亡一般暗淡,你向内部驶去。
穿过野金雀花和海藻,穿过石楠和撕碎的羊毛,
你跑,拉着我的手,让我有生之年目睹一次:
光的旋转,旋转,呼啸,光在寻找失踪者。
在那里,自从有火的年岁以来,烛光与空旷的灯盏,
鲸鱼油与灯芯,油菜花与炼油,煤油与电石,
信号灯火,照亮了胡克塔边危险的海岸。
你对我说,醒着,像镜片制造者,死的时候
肺部全是玻璃,像红豆杉花,蜜蜂成群飞去时仍然盛开,
像琥珀色的大教堂,甚至连西多教的鬼也会善待你。
如同在雨后的珠光碧云里,或更远的水中,
水,看到或感觉到的,海水或湖水,你静止下来,长时间
向外凝视。当萤火虫睁眼,闭合,在松树间发光,
一颗星辰升起,我们唯一的天堂。你教我这样活着。
死后如同初生之前。没有什么
可畏惧。只有幸福难以承受,如同它的源泉
一样可怕。向着光,永远向着光,无需船舶。

明迪 译 Translated into Chinese by Ming Di