Louise Glück: Mirror Image

　　Mirror Image
　　　　　　　　　Louise Glück (1943-)
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as
the image of my father whose life
was spent like this,
thinking of death, to the exclusion
of other sensual matters, so in the end that life
was easy to give up, since
it contained nothing: even
my mother’s voice couldn’t make him
change or turn back
as he believed
that once you can’t love another human being
you have no place in the world.

　　　镜像
　　　　　　[美] 露伊丝·格利克 (1943-)
今夜我在幽暗的窗户中看到自己
是我父亲的模样，他的一生
已如此耗尽，
想到死亡，当种种
感官内容被排除，结果便是
人生很容易放弃，因为
它只容纳虚空：甚至
我母亲的声音都不能令他
改变初衷或回心转意，
他坚信
一旦你不能去爱另一个人，
你便不得占着此世。

Note to the translation:
The last line of the poetry appears to have an obvious Chinese phrase 立足之地 (a place for footing), but I have translated it into a more dynamic line, which literally means "you then shall not take a space/place in this world". For in Chinese, there is a phrase to describe a person as a walking dead because it only "takes a place in the human community" or a good-for-nothing as one who "takes the place of/ squat over a latrine pit but does not shit."

最后一句“无立足之处”开始也是自然而然的进入头脑中的，但是认真一想，整首诗歌中一个很核心的概念是 实在与空虚，因此对于一个没有内容了的人，就不应该再在这个世界“占据”一个人的空间位置。呵呵，既想到行尸走肉，又想到“占着茅坑不拉屎”。又：有时候只是想不要翻译得太平了。有时候语法上流畅了，句子就失去了惊喜感；有时候节奏和语法上有跳跃性，句子会显得不沉稳。得看一个诗人的总体性情如何。格利克应该是在沉稳、似乎平淡无奇之中，会灵光一闪的。所以就会有点想在译文的某处显示一下她的灵气。