读着我刚刚写完的
我戛然而止
我相信
这样我写的故事似乎有点扭曲
但结局并不意外
就像某种人工雾
一步步往外往上飘散
预想到会出现艰难的集合变化
我为什么停止?
某种本能预感到一种状况?
我心里的艺术家一如既往地介入
来阻止一场事故?
正如诗人们所言
一种状况或命运
在刚过去的几小时里
凭着直觉存在着
过去我肯定这样想过
然而我讨厌这个术语
它对我来说像拐杖像月相
或许又像荒谬的青春期
然而
它的确是我曾用过的术语
频繁地诠释着我的失败
命运的设计和警告对我而言
就像局部对称
或巨大混乱里转喻的小饰品
正如我所见的混乱
我的画笔凝固了
我无法绘制描述
黑暗,寂静,
就是这种感觉
我们该怎样称呼它?
我相信 一种“视觉危机”
对应着与我父母对峙的那棵树
然而他们被迫前行
碰上绊脚石
我后退或逃离
雾遮住了我命运的舞台
角色们来来去去
戏服换了
我拿画笔的手
从一边挪到另一边
远离油画
就像挡风玻璃的雨刷
从一边划到另一边
这的确就是沙漠,
漆黑夜晚的沙漠
(实际上,在伦敦一条拥挤的街道上,
行人们挥舞着他们的彩色地图)
有人在人流里
说出一个字:我
极棒的形式
我深吸一口气
吐出这口气的人走过来
他稚嫩的手
自信地挥舞着画笔
我曾经是这个孩子吗?
这个孩子又是个探索家,
眼前道路突然清晰
对他来说单调的生活
远处 再也看不到
高贵的孤独的康德
走向桥的途中
(我们同一天生日)
外面 喜庆的街道川流不息
一月末,精疲力尽的圣诞灯
一个女人斜靠在爱人肩上
用其女高音唱着雅克·布雷
布拉沃河!
门关上了
没有什么逃离 没有什么进来
我没挪动
感到沙漠从前面延伸过来
(现在似乎)
沙漠从四面八方延伸过来
在我说话的同时变换着
这样我不断地与空虚面对面
空虚这个单调的继子
慢慢变成了我的主题和中心
我的孪生兄弟说过的
我的思想变成了他的?
似乎他应该说过
对我而言没有绊脚石
(为了争论)
在那之后我应该指向宗教
宗教是回答信仰问题的墓地
雾散去了
空白的画布变成了墙壁
小猫死了(所以歌也走了)
灵魂问:
我应该从死亡中站起来吗?
太阳也回答是
沙漠回答:
你的声音是风中散落的沙子
Afterword
By Louise Gluce
Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort
sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes.
Why did I stop? Did some instinct
discern a shape, the artist in me
intervening to stop traffic, as it were?
A shape. Or fate, as the poets say,
intuited in those few long ago hours—
I must have thought so once.
And yet I dislike the term
which seems to me a crutch, a phase,
the adolescence of the mind, perhaps—
Still, it was a term I used myself,
frequently to explain my failures.
Fate, destiny, whose designs and warnings
now seem to me simply
local symmetries, metonymic
baubles within immense confusion—
Chaos was what I saw.
My brush froze—I could not paint it.
Darkness, silence: that was the feeling.
What did we call it then?
A “crisis of vision” corresponding, I believed,
to the tree that confronted my parents,
but whereas they were forced
forward into the obstacle,
I retreated or fled—
Mist covered the stage (my life).
Characters came and went, costumes were changed,
my brush hand moved side to side
far from the canvas,
side to side, like a windshield wiper.
Surely this was the desert, the dark night.
(In reality, a crowded street in London,
the tourists waving their colored maps.)
One speaks a word: I.
Out of this stream
the great forms—
I took a deep breath. And it came to me
the person who drew that breath
was not the person in my story,
his childish hand
confidently wielding the crayon—
Had I been that person? A child but also
an explorer to whom the path is suddenly clear, for whom
the vegetation parts—
And beyond, no longer screened from view, that exalted
solitude Kant perhaps experienced
on his way to the bridges—
(We share a birthday.)
Outside, the festive streets
were strung, in late January, with exhausted Christmas lights.
A woman leaned against her lover’s shoulder
singing Jacques Brel in her thin soprano—
Bravo! the door is shut.
Now nothing escapes, nothing enters—
I hadn’t moved. I felt the desert
stretching ahead, stretching (it now seems)
on all sides, shifting as I speak,
so that I was constantly
face to face with blankness, that
stepchild of the sublime,
which, it turns out,
has been both my subject and my medium.
What would my twin have said, had my thoughts
reached him?
Perhaps he would have said
in my case there was no obstacle (for the sake of argument)
after which I would have been
referred to religion, the cemetery where
questions of faith are answered.
The mist had cleared. The empty canvases
were turned inward against the wall.
The little cat is dead (so the song went).
Shall I be raised from death, the spirit asks.
And the sun says yes.
And the desert answers
your voice is sand scattered in wind.