Double Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe

13. Athens Shoes

58 去雅典的鞋子 这地方已经呆够了。 总得去一趟雅典—— 多年来，你赤脚在田野里行走。 梦中人留下一双去雅典的鞋子， 你却在纽约把它脱下。 在纽约街头你开鞋店， 贩卖家乡人懒散的手工活路， 贩卖他们从动物换来的脚印， 从春天树木砍下来的双腿—— 这一切对文明是有吸引力的。 但是尤利西斯的鞋子 未必适合你梦想中的美国， 也未必适合观光时代的雅典之旅。 那样的鞋子穿在脚上 未必会使文明人走向荷马。 他们不会用砍伐的树木行走， 也不会花钱去买死人的鞋子， 即使花掉的是死人的金钱。 一双气味扰人的鞋要走出多远 才能长出适合它的双脚？ 关掉你的鞋店。请想象 巨兽穿上彬彬有礼的鞋 去赴中产阶级的体面晚餐。 请想象一只孤零零的芭蕾舞脚尖 在巨兽的不眠夜踮起。 59 Athens Shoes Enough of this place: you’re off to Athens. Too many years spent barefoot in the fields. In a dream, a woman gave you a pair of sandals to walk to Athens but New York was where you took them off. On a Manhattan street corner you opened a cobbler’s stand and plied your ancestors’ lazy trade, peddling the footprints they bought from animals, your own legs severed from a tree in spring: objects of interest to civilization. But the shoes of Ulysses do not fit the America you dream, and the Sightseeing Age is not the time for a trip to Athens. Your sandals won’t make modern feet walk down the road to Homer. These people don’t want to walk on your wooden legs, and they wouldn’t buy dead people’s shoes, even if they held immortal currency. How far must those sweet-scented sandals walk before they grow their pair of feet? Close down your stand. Imagine, if you will, a monstrous beast in respectable shoes on his way to a bourgeois dinner party. Imagine the toe of a ballerina en pointe in his sleepless nights. 60 请想象一个人失去双腿之后 仍然在奔跑。雅典远在千里之外。 哦孤独的长跑者：多年来 他的假肢有力地敲打大地， 他的鞋子在深渊飞翔—— 你未必希望那是雅典之旅的鞋子。 61 Imagine: a man who has lost both legs still running, running. And Athens—oceans away. Pity the lone runner, his artificial legs flogging the ground for years without end while a pair of sandals wing through the abyss— don’t let those be your Athens shoes. ...