Plath: Wintering

Sylvia Plath Collected Poems
No. 180
　　　Wintering

This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.
I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,
Six jars of it,
Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,

Wintering in a dark without window
At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
And the bottles of empty glitters—
Sir So-and-so's gin.

This is the room I have never been in.
This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint

Chinese yellow on appalling objects—
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees—the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin

To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.

Now they ball in a mass,
Black
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.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women—
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanish walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　9 October 1962

普拉斯《诗全编》
第180首

　　越冬

这是清闲时节，无须操劳。
我已旋转产婆的吸引器，
我有自己的蜜，
整整六罐，
藏在酒窖里的六只猫眼，

在无窗的黑暗中饲养蜜蜂越冬，
在房屋的中心，
挨着上一位租户腐臭的果酱
以及许多闪光的空瓶子——
某先生的杜松子酒。

这个房间我从不曾走进。
这个房间里我以不能呼吸。
黑，像一只蝙蝠聚拢于此，
没有光，
除了火炬和它依稀的

中国黄，照着毛骨悚然的物体——
黑色的愚笨。腐朽。
收藏。
正是这些东西控制我。
并不残酷也非毫不在乎，

只是无知。
这个时节，蜜蜂必须撑下去——它们
如此迟缓，我几乎认不出它们，
士兵似地列队
向糖浆罐移动，

索赔我取自它们的蜜。
塔特莱尔牌白糖维系它们活下去，
这精炼的雪。
现在它们靠塔特莱尔牌白糖，而非花朵。
它们吸食着。寒冷逼近。

它们聚成一大团，
黑色
头脑对抗着所有的白。
雪的微笑是白皑皑的。
它肆意铺展，一哩长的躯体，像梅森牌瓷器。

在暖和的日子，它们只得将
死者运送到这样的躯体中。
蜜蜂都是女人，
使女和那位修长的皇族贵妇，
她们已驱除了男人，

那帮顽梗、迂拙、失足于歧途的粗鄙汉子。
冬季，属于女人——
那位妇人，静静地织着毛线，
在西班牙胡桃木的摇篮旁，
身体是寒冷中的球茎，喑哑得不能思索。

这箱蜜蜂能否存活，这些剑兰
能否成功封火，
进入来年？
它们会体味到什么？圣诞节的玫瑰？
蜜蜂在飞。它们体味到了春天。
　　　　　　　　　　1962年10月9日