比利.科林斯1941年生于美国纽约市，现纽约城市大学教授。他于出版了七本诗集，多次获奖。2001年6月被命名为美国桂冠诗人。
夜总会
你是如此美丽而我是个傻瓜
去与你相爱
这是歌和诗中
保持发生的题材。
似乎没有变动的余地。
我从未听过任何人唱
我是如此美丽
而你是个傻瓜与我相爱，
虽然这个想法确曾
同样地穿越过女人和男人的脑际。
你是如此美丽，太糟了你是个傻瓜
是另一首你没听到。
或，你是个傻瓜去考虑我美丽。
那一首你总也不会听到，肯定无疑。
这个下午 没有特别的原因
我正倾听约翰尼哈特曼
他忧郁的嗓音缭绕在
爱，美，和傻的概念周围
象是没有他人可及。
它感觉似一缕烟从支香烟缭绕而起
有人约在凌晨三点把这香烟
丢在一架宝贝平台大钢琴上燃着；
烟雾翻腾上升进入明亮的灯光
而在那以外的黑暗里
一些美丽的傻瓜已经聚集
在小桌周围去倾听，
有人闭上了眼睛，
其他人则倾斜向音乐
好象它扶持着他们而立，
或快速旋转着玻璃杯中松散的冰块，
逐渐滑入一个有节奏的梦里。
是，有许多傻美丽，
熬过了午夜，
不想回家，
尤其现在当屋里的每个人
正观赏那大男人戴着次中音萨克斯管
象条金鱼悬挂在他的脖子上。
他移到舞台的边缘
向下递给我这乐器
并点头示意该我演奏。
所以我将吹口放到我唇上
吹进我平生的气力。
我们都特别傻，
我长长的比波普独奏曲由俗语开始，
多么该死的傻
我们全然不觉已经变得美丽。
Nightclub
You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.
For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.
Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so xxxx foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.
我问你
我将会沉浸于什么景象
比这个好，
一个平常的夜晚在厨房餐桌旁，
花墙纸压入近逼，
白柜橱放满了玻璃杯，
电话沈默，
一支笔偏斜回我的手里？
这给我时间去考虑
发生在外面的一切—
落叶向角落聚集，
地衣绿了高高的灰色岩石。
而世界航行在沙丘之上，
庞大，朝向海，历史冒泡尾随。
但超出桌子之外
没有我的需要，
甚至没一份职业让我划向工作，
或一辆咖啡色的奥斯顿马丁DB4
配置着破裂的绿色皮车座。
不，全在这里，
一杯水的清晰椭圆，
一小条板箱桔子，一本有关斯大林的书，
不去提及那奇特的恶吠鱼
在墙上的一个框架里，
和那三支蜡烛的情形—
高矮各异—
正在完善和谐的歌唱。
那么原谅我
如果我此时低头倾听
那个短低音蜡烛的独唱。
而我的心
在我的衬衣下乱弹—
青蛙在池塘的边缘—
我的思绪却飞离向一个
用一个极其巨大的天空
和百万个空洞的分支构筑的地方。
I Ask You
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside—
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles—
each a different height—
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt—
frog at the edge of a pond—
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
创作
今晚的月亮是块
被咬掉一口的薄脆饼干
飘飘荡荡浮在夜天，
按照日历
约莫一周时间
它看似大概会
象个银色的橄榄球，
而九天, 或许十天之前
它使我想起一个薄明的蟹钳.
可渐渐地--
到这个月底
我推断--
它将消瘦至
身影全无
天上只留繁星点点，
而对我自己来说
会有几个夜晚
让我极度紧张的笔得以休闲。
INVENTION
Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,
and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look
like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.
But eventually --
by the end of the month,
I reckon --
it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,
and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.
百慕大
当我们走下泛白的木阶
来到海滩并仰面躺在
蓝白色的轻便马车上
靠近水边
在地图中那小点之上，
这大海运动夹克上的一枚纽扣，
一男一女
我们几乎
无事能做。
整个上午我们观赏云朵
在头顶滚动
或闭目养神
聊来侃去，
声音被沉闷单调的海浪挫平
言词在风中奇特地翻筋头。
今天是耶稣受难日，
这离任何弥撒场所都几百英里
离耶稣受难地几千英里。
野芙蓉沿着路边缠绕，
黄腹鸟唱着它的名字，
所有的店铺都关闭了
因为今天是做热十字小面包
和在海滩放飞风筝的日子—
去吃这香甜的十字架
用线绳将十字架固定在天空里。
白色的沙灼热起来
当我们中的一人指出猪嘴
正拱出地平线，而那更高处
张口的鳄鱼安然的要吃一小片云朵。
瞧那是个多么巨大的脑袋，
象那魔鬼戴着眼镜
你说着，我却迎着太阳合上眼睛
只能听见你的话语
被轻轻海风柔弱翘曲，
告诉我这脑袋如何变为一辆自行车，
那种大车轮的站在游戏纸牌上，
当海水冲入，又落回—
弹珠无穷尽地倾泻到大理石地面—
而我俩竟如此平静
这似乎不是我们仅有的生活
只是系列中的一出，一手镯上的饰物，
仿佛每天我们都不是在跑
象那海滩上孤独的奔跑者
朝向没有形状或波浪的黑暗
朝向十字架或云朵，
好象我们中的一个不可能
先到那儿而拉下另一个，
漂泊在荒岛上
没有粉色房子和蓝色格窗，
没有李子色配饰着奶油色，
没有海面礁石将波浪爆裂成泡沫，
也没有熟悉的声音在风中弯折。
Bermuda
When we walk down the bleached-out wooden stairs
to the beach and lie on our backs
on the blue and white chaises
near the edge of the water
on this dot in the atlas,
this single button on the blazer of the sea,
we come about as close
as a man and a woman can
to doing nothing.
All morning long we watch the clouds
roll overhead
or close our eyes and do the lazy
back-and-forth of talk,
our voices flattened by the drone of surf,
our words tumbling oddly in the wind.
It's Good Friday here, hundreds of miles
from any mass of land,
thousands from Calvary.
Wild hibiscus twists along the roadsides,
the yellow-breasted bird sings its name,
and all the stores are closed
because today is the day to make hot cross buns
and fly kites from the beaches—
to eat the sweet cross,
to fix with a string a cross in the sky.
The white sand heats up
as one of us points out the snout of a pig
on the horizon, and higher up
a gaping alligator poised to eat a smaller cloud.
See how that one is a giant head,
like the devil wearing glasses
you say, but my eyes are shut against the sun
and I only hear your words,
softened and warped by the sea breeze,
telling me how the head is becoming a bicycle,
the high-wheel kind on playing cards,
while the sea rushes in, falls back—
marbles pouring endlessly onto a marble floor—
and the two of us so calm
it seems that this is not our only life,
just one in a series, charms on a bracelet,
as if every day we were not running
like the solitary runners on the beach
toward a darkness without shape
or waves, crosses or clouds,
as if one of us is not likely to get there first
leaving the other behind,
castaway on an island
with no pink houses or blue shutters,
no plum-colored ones trimmed in cream,
no offshore reef to burst the waves into foam,
and no familiar voice being bent in the wind.
介绍诗歌
我要他们拿一首诗
高高举起至光亮
象个彩色幻灯片
或把一只耳朵紧靠它的蜂房。
我说将一只老鼠投入诗
并注视它探查它的出路，
或行走于诗歌房子内
感觉墙壁寻找灯开关。
我要它们滑水
跃过一首诗的表面
向岸上作者名字挥手。
但所有他们想做的是
用绳子将诗捆绑在椅子上
并严刑拷打使之招供。
他们开始用软管打它
以找出其真实内涵。
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
火焰
那只叫烟雾的熊
走进秋天的森林地带
携着一红色罐子汽油
和一盒木制火柴。
他的巡逻骑兵帽
翘起一个使人烦乱的角。
他的棕色皮毛
在高高的太阳下闪烁
当时他的爪子，棒球手
手套的尺寸，
劈啪作响远去。
他讨厌分发
警告给粗心大意的
弱智的露营者，
蠢笨的徒步旅行者。
他打算向他们演示
一个专业人员如何做。
Flames
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.
His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.
He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.
He is going to show them
how a professional does it.
走过大西洋
我等待假日的人群都离开海滩
在第一波浪潮踏上之前。
很快我走过大西洋
考虑西班牙，
查对鲸鱼，喷水口。
我感觉海水托起我变换的重量。
今夜我将睡在它摇晃的表面。
但现在我力图去想象
这下面的鱼定会看到的情形
我的脚掌时隐时现。
Walking across the Atlantic
I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.
Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.
But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.
--Billy Collins
