Plath: The Courage of Shutting-Up

Sylvia Plath Collected Poems
No. 175

　　　The Courage of Shutting-Up

The courage of the shut mouth, in spite of artillery!
The line pink and quiet, a worm, basking.
There are black disks behind it, the disks of outrage,
And the outrage of a sky, the lined brain of it.
The disks revolve, they ask to be heard--

Loaded, as they are, with accounts of bastardies.
Bastardies, usages, desertions and doubleness,
The needle journeying in its groove,
Silver beast between two dark canyons,
A great surgeon, now a tattooist,

Tattooing over and over the same blue grievances,
The snakes, the babies, the tits
On mermaids and two-legged dreamgirls.
The surgeon is quiet, he does not speak.
He has seen too much death, his hands are full of it.

So the disks of the brain revolve, like the muzzles of cannon.
Then there is that antique billhook, the tongue,
Indefatigable, purple. Must it be cut out?
It has nine tails, it is dangerous.
And the noise it flays from the air, once it gets going!

No, the tongue, too, has been put by,
Hung up in the library with the engravings of Rangoon
And the fox heads, the otter heads, the heads of dead rabbits.
It is a marvelous object--
The things it has pierced in its time.

But how about the eyes, the eyes, the eyes?
Mirrors can kill and talk, they are terrible rooms
In which a torture goes on one can only watch.
The face that lived in this mirror is the face of a dead man.
Do not worry about the eyes--

They may be white and shy, they are no stool pigeons,
Their death rays folded like flags
Of a country no longer heard of,
An obstinate independency
Insolvent among the mountains.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　2 October 1962


普拉斯《诗全编》
第175首

　　　闭嘴的勇气

紧闭的嘴，勇气可嘉，无视炮阵！
那一列粉红安静的队列，一只长虫，晒着太阳。
它后面有几个黑圆盘，暴怒的圆盘，
一苍天的暴怒，排满了它的整个脑子。
圆盘旋转着，它们要求有人听见——

它们装满了对卑劣行径的诉说，犹如炮弹已上膛。
卑劣不检、利用、遗弃和阳奉阴违，
撞针正沿着槽轨向前推进，
银色野兽逡巡在两扇黑峡谷之间，
一个伟大的手术师，而这个是纹身师，

一遍又一遍纹着同样的蓝色冤屈，
纹水蛇、纹孩童、也纹乳头，
纹在美人鱼身上，在两腿的梦中女郎身上。
手术师沉静从容，一言不发。
他见识过太多死亡，双手也已沾满。

于是大脑的圆盘旋转，如大炮的嘴。
接着是那古董钩型镰刀，那舌头，
紫色的，永不疲倦。必须割掉吗？
它有九根尾巴，非常危险。
一旦自由放任，它就能空穴来风，制造无穷噪音！

不，这舌头，也已被存放一边了，
高挂在图书馆里，一道存放的，还有仰光的雕刻画，
狐狸头、水獭头、死兔子的头。
这是一件神奇物——
它当道时，就已戳穿许多物体。

可怎么处置眼睛、眼睛、眼睛？
镜子都可以杀人，还能言善辩，它们是恐怖屋，
那里的折磨永无休止，人，只能眼睁睁地看着。
这面镜子里住着一张脸，属于一个死了的男人。
不必担心这双眼睛——

它们可能泛白而害羞，但不是作诱饵的鸽子，
它们的死亡光芒折叠着，
犹如某个不再听说的国家的国旗，
一种倔强的独立，
在群山之间亏蚀破产。
　　　　　　　　　　1962年10 月2日