[译]伯特·迈耶斯 《无题——或“做一个诗人”》

无题——或“做一个诗人”

【美】伯特·迈耶斯     陈子弘 译

为了活着，我专注于诗歌就像男人
专注于女人一样，像野兽呻吟或
鸟儿歌唱一样，以调剂我的喜怒哀乐。

言语于我就是嘹亮的奶头——
舌头下满载回忆的润喉糖，
喉咙间的汁液。

我找到了惠特曼，并且相信诗人应该表述他的
国家；找到了里尔克，可怜了我中产阶级的自我
一会儿；找到了布莱克，在每一行均读出了政治；
找到了一茶，希望也能更有同情心和谦逊。

艾米丽·狄金森教我致用隐喻；叶芝
揭示了寓意深刻的散文时代音乐的价值。
十年的画框和镀金工人生涯说服了我，那就是
诗歌应该精美光滑。

我认识许多女服务生和看门人，绝妙图景
从他们身上涌出一如高速路上的车河。
比起大多数的文学我更喜欢童话，我相信
《玛丽有只小羔羊》的最后一行会比《诗章》
或《荒原》更加旷达。

诗人简介：伯特·迈耶斯（Bert Meyers， 1928-1979）美国当代诗人。高中毕业后成为了一名熟练的画框和镀金工人。尽管迈尔斯没有上过大学，但他凭借诗歌的力量被克莱蒙特大学研究生院录取，并获得了博士学位。他在生前出版过五部诗集。迈耶斯生前曾在此任教的皮策学院在诗人去世后，在校内的格罗夫大楼设立了伯特·梅耶斯诗歌馆以资纪念。

Untitled—or, “To Be a Poet”

Bert Meyers

I turned to poetry the way a man turns to a woman,
in order to live; the way an animal moans or a
bird sings, to relieve myself of pain and joy.

Words, to me, are sonorous nipples—
each one a lozenge full of memories under the tongue,
a liquid in the throat.

I found Whitman and believed a poet should express
his country; Rilke, and pitied my middle-class self for
a while; Blake and saw politics in every line;
Issa and wished to be so compassionate and humble.

Emily Dickinson taught me to rely on metaphor; Yeats
showed me the value of music in a time of portentous prose.
Ten years as a picture framer and gilder convinced me that even
poems should be beautifully made.

I’ve known waitresses and janitors from whom great
images flowed like traffic on a freeway. I prefer
fairy tales to most literature and I believe that the last stanza of
“Mary had a little lamb” is more profound than The Cantos
or The Waste Land.

from In a Dybbuk's Raincoat: Collected Poems