移動的詩

紐約地鐵上，表情豐富的那些人，不是結伴的學生，就是好奇的遊客。 搬到紐約不到半年，就學會了遇事不驚，在地鐵里保持一副平板的表情。剩下要處理的，就是把目光放在哪裡。你可以打量那些同車的乘客，擺視而不見的架勢，避免直接的眼神接觸。大多時候，車上也就是平常的上班族，臉色慘澹，表情冷漠，毫無趣味。 如果沒有準備好可讀的書報，可塗改的稿子，不想盯着別人的褲子鞋子一路過去，就只有去看那些形形色色的廣告。

地鐵上的廣告，看多了也煩：看皮膚病的Dr.Z，關心你被高跟鞋折磨的腳的足科醫師，幫你離婚幫你索賠的律師，這個啤酒，那個假期， 還有捷運總署孜孜不倦的教誨“走路當心”，“不推不攘”，“積德讓位”，“不要施錢”。。。 除了英文，還有西班牙文版，實在悶得無聊，可以想象着讀西班牙文，看多了就像懂那麼一點的樣子。

如果運氣好，你會抬眼看到地鐵里最酷的廣告：捷運和B&N書店合出的"移動的詩"--poetry in motion. 雖說都是淺顯易懂的句子,卻可以把你轉移到另一個空間裡去. 比如說這首Sonia Sanchez 的 A poem for Jesse:

Your face like
Summer lightning
gets caught in my voice
and I drew you up from
deep rivers
taste your face of a
thousand names
See you smile
a neat season
hear your voice
a wild sea pausing in the wind.

或者這首警世的 Beware of Things in Duplicate(by Dana Gioia):

Beware of things in duplicate:
a set of knives, the cufflink in a drawer,
the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes
of someone sitting next to you:
Attend that empty minute in the evening
when looking at the clock, you see
its hand are fixed on the same hour
you noticed at your morning coffee.
These are the moments to beware
when there is nothing so familiar
or so close that cannot betray you:
a twin, an extra key, an echo,
your own reflection in the glass.

要麼是現實的 Misgivings (by William Mathews )

Listen,
my wary one, it's far too late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very slowly.

還有浪漫的節選:

I would like to be the air
That inhabits you for a moment
Only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary
(From Variations of the word Sleep, by Margarette Atwood)

你甚至會發現原來杜甫的詩也可以這麼現代:

-Too much heat, too much work

It's the fourteenth of August, and I'm too hot
To endure food, or bed. Steam and the fear of scorpions
Keep me awake. I'm told the heat won't fade with Autumn.

Swarms of flies arrive. I'm roped into my clothes.
In another moment I'll scream down the office
As the paper mountains rise higher on my desk.

最讓我感動的卻是這一首華裔女詩人 Li-Young Lee 的

-I Ask My Mother To Sing

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more,

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

趕緊低下頭,不讓旁人看見眼裡的淚光.