Thursday, September 17, 2009

Plath: For a Fatherless Son

Sylvia Plath Collected Poems
No. 172

   For a Fatherless Son

You will be aware of an absence, presently,
Growing beside you, like a tree,
A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree—
Balding, gelded by lightning—an illusion,
And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention.

But right now you are dumb.
And I love your stupidity,
The blind mirror of it. I look in
And find no face but my own, and you think that's funny.
It is good for me

To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung.
One day you may touch what's wrong
The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.
Till then your smiles are found money.
              26 September 1962


普拉斯《诗全编》
第172首

  致没父亲的儿子

很快,你将感到一种缺失,
在你身边生长,像一棵树,
一棵死树,退了色,一棵澳洲胶树——
正在秃顶,被闪电阉了——一种幻像,
一顷天空,如猪的后腰背,注意力彻底丧失。

但你现在还是哑巴。
而我爱你的傻气,
它的盲镜。我照了照,
没发现别的脸,只有我自己,而你觉得好玩。
这对我有益,

能有你来抓我的鼻子,一把梯子的横档。
终有一天,你会摸到出差错的东西,
小脑壳,破碎的蓝色山丘,令人惶恐的沉寂。
到那时,你的微笑将是失而复得的钱财。
          1962年9月26日

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