More Bad Ideas

My excuses to get away keep canceling
so I'm left with the real thing to come back to,
yet here too are excuses and who wants to wait for the bell to sound
announcing the start of the next level. For now, running in place is my position
in the training room, catching glances of others trapped by the ratio
of delicious is to walking or jogging. While I get older
and you stay happily between body and soul for now, take it each day I say
and you wonder about a time I'd teach you Japanese
when we have all the time to wander into languages and cafes
faraway from water, always just friends and walking, aerobics,
weight training, swimming in one lane together,
sketching and losing ourselves in film festivals, later taking trains
and sea routes north and south along the coast and inland
as long as we return in time to sleep in our separate worlds,
shopping for DVDs by the minutes listed,
clothing by the layers tucking our bodies away
and letting be all the excuses, the library a circle of cafeterias
and restrooms, study rooms to filter the good parts to put to use.
Now I've forgotten hide and seek, hiding behind pillars
holding up the airport, watching pretty lone travelers
shooting themselves with cell cameras
the way open hands used to prop up waves of one's hair long ago
at the cusp of Leo and Virgo, an audience in the offing
eye contact from a turquoise fountain.
The let-downs never end. Why bother—
stuck in this too long too old, one says; too fast, another;
too musical, one; too sad, too sissy, too bouncy others
would hold me to my category, still me and save me, ensnare me
and market me just when I want to leave me, everyday have a new me
to talk it through, keep this up, postponing, excuses,
having all the time in a world of one day finally touching.

時事川柳 satirical ditty on current events

北拉致が忘れられない歴史ボケ
[so forgetful of history, yet Japan will never forget those abducted to North Korea]

戲劇演出 Histrionics

我的朋友活在獨裁政權底下 人們滿腦子只有他們自己以及從一數到十 孩童到君主，農奴到官僚 直至騷動蜂擁而起，就在你的指尖 恰恰是玩笑的成分改變了它自身，那諸般的可能 眾人議論紛紛但沒人知道將會往何處去 爾後更嚮往起美好的舊日時光 那時每個季節都在進步演化之中 而現在，你走進某些房間誓言保守祕密—— 一種抑制效應緩和了突發的危機 將末日的傳染病控制在海灣附近 地平線上有第三黨的發言人指出了方向 有如走出抑鬱，翻到下一頁 一個新的誓約，莊嚴肅穆 為了那完善的標準，如此美好而安靜 我們越來越富有男子氣概 在無線對講機的護送下，興高采烈地 讓行李接受X光檢測出表裡不一 和任何被夾帶進入我們的故事的成分 彷彿我們無意中聽到的比我們原本知道的還多 原文／Dean Brink 翻譯／江敏甄 My friend's lived under a dictatorship, men full of themselves and their countings to ten, child to lord, serf to the bureaus until a hubbub wells up and at your fingertips the very sport of it alters it, possibilities everyone talks about but nobody really knows where it will lead, later longing for the good old days evolving each season. For now, you enter certain rooms sworn to secrecy— a dampening effect lulling the interim crisis to hold at bay a doomsday epidemic over a horizon where third-party spokespersons point to it as if to turn the page out of the blue to a new oath, solemnity for good measure, such quiet good we grow more mannish in walkie-talkie convoys, happy to have our luggage x-rayed for inconsistencies, anything piggy-backed to our story as if we'd overheard more than we knew.

荒蕪 Waste

以冰淇淋度日的冬季，在我母親的房子裡
風呼呼穿過窗玻璃針孔般的罅隙

任時光倒回，所有的衣服已不再合身——
新的重力牽引，日復一日
濕黏的碼頭船索慢慢浸蝕在熱氣裡——
科學終究比硫磺來得猛烈
迫於戰爭，乾硬的泥塊上滿佈皸裂的痕跡
沿著海岸，一路裂到門前的庭院——
足以讓妳用來作為蠟筆塗敷顏色
一次次的穿透老化了紙張
終至疲乏扭曲
失控的腫塊蔓延著
縫合在拼綴的表皮下繼續膨脹
妳屈身準備靠向一處淺灘，拋繩

上岸，將錨鏈留在低潮


原文／Dean Brink
翻譯／江敏甄

墜落的女人——記艾瑞克‧費雪銅雕被遮覆之日 Eric Fischl's Bronze Tumbling Woman Draped and Curtained Off

墜落的女人——記艾瑞克‧費雪銅雕被遮覆之日


那麼多的墜落，以致無法睜眼看它
兀自縐成一團
依然喘息
攝影機蜂擁向另一扇窗

一個早年的榮光在遠處重複演練
鏡頭探入
而我們屏息以待
下一個堅定不移的低沈嗓音
被票選而出，雷厲風行
以狂熱，簇擁在窗台外的
一式的憤怒，慢慢溶解

在火烤的土地上
衛星遙遠的彼端
從天空下達命令
地表遂因那手術而發熱


譯按：「墜落的女人」（Tumbling Woman, 2001）為美國當代藝術家艾瑞克‧費雪（Eric Fischl , 1948~）的系列銅雕，作品傳神捕捉人體由高處墜地的剎那姿態，驚恐誇張的神情，極具震撼力。時值911恐怖攻擊事件發生後，展覽揭幕不久，官方認為有引發觀者創痛記憶之虞，致使該作隨即遭覆蓋。

二○○三年三月美國政府不顧聯合國反對，逕自出兵伊拉克。
——寫於二○○二年十月，美國決定攻擊伊拉克

原文／Dean Brink
翻譯／江敏甄

Eric Fischl's Bronze Tumbling Woman Draped and Curtained Off


Too much to view the falling
come in to its crumpling
still breathing
the video streams to another window,

an earlier glory repeated farther away
to zoom in
while we hold down
for the next unwavering drone
elected, doings-away-with
fever-pitched, crowded around ledges
all the same anger, dissolving

in fire-softened earth
the far side of satellites
reaching down from the sky,
surfaces warm from operations.

10/2002

彼日的寓言 Parable of the Day

當時有人在你面前滑倒
在擦得晶亮的紅色大理石地板上

每個路過的人都留下一灘漫漶的水漬
早晨一場大雨過後的咖啡館湧進了泥濘

而你看見那人的提包掉落
當他奮力跳過潮濕發亮的地面

你想要幫他撿起提包
不過是一個關心的動作

原本將會是糟糕的一天
卻在意念和行動之間的鴻溝消失時

你趨前撿起提包交給那人
挽救了這一天，就像沒事發生一樣

原文／Dean Brink
翻譯／江敏甄

When someone before you slips
on polished cinnabar marble

everyone leaving a cumulative trail of puddles
after a morning shower muddied into the cafe,

and you see the man's valise landing
while he pushes himself off the heavy, shiny ground

you think of picking it up for him
a gesture of concern.

It was going to be a bad day
and as the gap between the idea and the act vanishes

and you approach the valise and hand it to him
it brings the day around, as if it never were.