辛夷

我用什么拥住你？
诗/博尔赫斯
译/辛夷
我给你荒落的街道、寂灭的落日和郊野的月亮。

我给你长久以来对月自苦的心伤。

我给你我故去的先祖，他们的亡魂被生者在大理石的铭文中颂扬；我的祖父，他捐躯于布宜诺斯埃利斯的边境战场，两颗子弹穿过了他的胸膛，他蓄着胡子，尸体被士兵以牛皮裹在一旁；我母亲的祖父，他在二十四岁那年率三百人冲锋在秘鲁战场，最终也成为马背上的亡魂，飘飘荡荡。

我给你我书笺中的一切洞见，以及我生命中所有的幽默和担当。

我给你我浪荡前生未尝有过的忠诚和信仰。

我给你我拥在自己内心的深藏——此心不狡饰文辞、不亵渎梦想，不被时间、欢愉或逆境染指彷徨。

我给你你未临人世的多年之前，一枝黄玫瑰在日落之时的影像。

我给你关于你生命的注解、关于你自我的论章，关于你真挚而惊艳的畅想。

我给你我的寂寞、我的阴郁，我内心的渴望；让我贿赂你，以迷茫、危险和败亡。

What can I hold you with?
Jorge Luis Borges

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.

I 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 bronze: 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 Peru, 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 explanations of 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 owith uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.