严力
Yan Li
 诗人、画家、作家。1954年生于北京。他是1979年北京先锋艺术团体“星星画会”和地下文学团体“今天”的成员。1985年从北京赴纽约并于1987年在纽约创立“一行”诗刊。严力出版过许多诗集和小说集，也办过数十次艺术展览。他的作品被翻译成各种文字。目前他定居上海和纽约。
Poet, painter, fiction writer, born in 1954 in Beijing, China. He is a member of a vanguard
artist group "The Stars" founded in 1979 and an underground literary group "Today"
in Beijing. As a poet, he is regarded as one of the members of the Misty Poets. He came to US
in 1985 and founded quarterly journal Yi-Hang in New York in 1987. His poems have been translated
into French, Italian, English, Swedish, Korean and German. He has held many exhibitions and
published a number of books. He lives in Shanghai and New York.
|
|
译者
Translator
Denis Mair
梅丹理
 Poet and translator. He is a co-translator of Frontier Taiwan(Columbia). His book of poems Man Cut in Wood was published by Valley Contemporary Press in 2003. He has lectured on the I CHING at the Temple School of Poetry (Walla Walla).
诗人和中英文翻译。 曾翻译了很多中国现代诗人的作品介绍给美国的诗坛，曾任美国西北部诗刊《诗庙》的编辑。他是美国哥伦比亚大学出版社出版的有关台湾的“前沿”一书的翻译者之一。他还曾在《寺庙》创办的诗人学校里讲课。他的个人诗集《刻在木头里的人》2003年由美国当代山谷出版社出版。
|
请运用你的想象
想象每个时代都有成千上万个工匠
前赴后继地
打磨着这块人间最大的玉石
所以它不可能不光滑
让你的手感四通八达
它不可能不坚硬
你撞上去必定会头破血流
它不可能不反光
你能看见整个世界因为它的弧度
而变形
|
|
Please use your imagination
Imagine thousands of craftsmen, down through the ages
Making a multigenerational effort
To polish the world’s biggest piece of jade
How could it be anything but smooth?
So wide-open and inviting to the touch
How could it be anything but hard?
Butt against it and get a bloody forehead
How could its surface fail to reflect light?
Along its contours you see the whole world
Twisted out of shape
|
树叶缝隙中扭动的蓝色
是天空为大地爵士乐所填写的歌词
我们仰望时的哀叹
是疾病在人体乐器上弹奏出来的
发自内心的哼哼唧唧曲调
高低音在医院的演唱会上
气势磅礴地此起彼伏
最流行的作曲家
名叫感冒
它用一个接一个的喷嚏
把生命的乐曲推向高烧
|
|
Blue patches that flex among intervals of leaves
Are lyrics the sky writes for jazz of mother earth
The sighs we make when looking up
Are heartfelt melodies of suspiration
Performed by illness upon the bodily instrument
The altos and tenors of the hospital choir
Lend their voice in waves that ebb and swell
The most popular tunesmith
Is called the common cold
With a burst of sneezes it propels our physical state
Into a crescendo of fever
|
相隔半米
是至少六千五百万年前的恐龙蛋
我轻轻地把二十一世纪的手放上去
时间就这样没有了距离
恍惚中
整个南阳变成了一条恐龙
我们在它的肚子里开着汽车穿行
走进它的胃
在餐厅里点菜
我把手缩回来
相隔半米
南阳就成为了旅游区
蛋的裂纹边还在继续布置景点
在围起来的旷野上解读铁铅色表层下面
石化的蛋黄和蛋清所组成的文章
这样的经历将导致每一盘炒鸡蛋
就让我想起南阳
回到上海
感觉恐龙用过的地球传到了我们这一代
更感觉一栋栋大楼就是钢筋水泥的恐龙
它们把地球用得更猛
而且还不会下蛋
|
|
Half a meter away
Is a dinosaur egg from 65 million years ago
On it I rest my 21st Century hand
Just like that---the distance of time is gone
Before I know it
All of Nanyang has become a dinosaur
Through which we drive in an automobile
We enter its belly
And order our meal in a cafeteria
My hand draws back
To half a meter's distance
Nanyang turns back into a tourist district
Planning new attractions beside a cracked shell
After this whenever I sit down to a plate of eggs
My thoughts will be drawn to Nanyang
Back in Shanghai I realize
The earth that was used by dinosaurs
Has passed down to our generation
I start to see the high rise buildings
As dinosaurs of reinforced concrete
Their way of using the earth is fiercer
|
