我用什么才能留住你?
——博尔赫斯
我给你萧索的街道、绝望的落日、荒郊的月亮。
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
我给你我已死去的祖辈,后人们用大理石祭奠的先魂;
我父亲的父亲,阵亡于布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境,
两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛,死的时候蓄着胡子,尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起;
我母亲的祖父——那年才二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋。
如今他们都成了消失在马背上的亡魂。
我给你我的书中所能蕴含的一切悟力,
以及我的生活中所有的男子气概和幽默。
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心——不营字造句,
不和梦交易,不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
我给你早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我给你关于你生命的阐释,关于你自己的理论,你的真实而惊人的存在。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴;我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets,
the moon of the jagged suburbsI offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men,
the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:
my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires,
two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead,
wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;
my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú,
now ghosts on vanished horses.I offer you whatever insight my books may hold.
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words,
traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanationsof yourself,
theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness,
the hunger of my heart;
I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
By Iris