介绍:
TAKING THE WATERS
There are taps that flow, all day and all night,
From the depths of Europe,
Inexhaustible, taken for granted,
Slaking our casual thirsts
At a railway station
Heading south, or here in the Abruzzo
Bursting cold from an iron standpipe
While our blind mouths
Suck at essentials, straight from the water table.
Our health is too good, we are not pilgrims,
And the nineteenth century
Led to disaster. Aix and Baden Baden –
Where are they now, those ladies with the vapours
Sipping at glasses of hydrogen sulphide
Every morning, while the pumphouse piano played
And Russian radicals steamed and stewed
For hours in their sulphur tubs
Plugged in to the cathodes of Revolution?
Real cures, for imaginary ailments –
Diocletian’s or Vespasian’s.
History passes, only the waters remain,
Bubbling up, through their carbon sheets,
To the other side of catastrophe
Where we drink, at a forgotten source,
Though the old crust of Europe
Centuries deep, restored by a local merchant
Of poultry and greens, inscribing his name in Latin.
汲水
整日，整夜，都有水龙头在流，
来自欧洲的深处，
无法耗尽，被无视，
平息我们随意的干渴,
在去往南方的
火车站，或在这里，阿布鲁佐
从铁储水管中冰冷地涌出,
而我们盲目的嘴
吮吸着必需品，径直来自地下水层。
我们太过健康，我们不是朝圣者，
而十九世纪引向了
灾难。艾克斯和巴登巴登
那些蒸汽中的淑女如今在哪儿？
每日清晨，啜饮玻璃杯中的
硫化氢，当泵房里演奏着钢琴。
而俄国激进者们一连数小时
在他们的硫黄浴盆里又蒸又炖，
插上了大革命的阴极？
为想象的疾厄提供真实的治疗
戴克里先的，或是韦伯芗的。
历史消逝，唯众水羁留，
冒着热泡，透过它们的碳酸层，
去往大灾难的彼岸，
我们在此饮水，在被遗忘的泉源，
尽管欧洲的古老外壳
深达数世纪，被一个卖家禽和蔬菜的
当地商人修复，用拉丁文把他的名字镌刻。
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