移动的诗

纽约地铁上，表情丰富的那些人，不是结伴的学生，就是好奇的游客。 搬到纽约不到半年，就学会了遇事不惊，在地铁里保持一副平板的表情。剩下要处理的，就是把目光放在哪里。你可以打量那些同车的乘客，摆视而不见的架势，避免直接的眼神接触。大多时候，车上也就是平常的上班族，脸色惨淡，表情冷漠，毫无趣味。 如果没有准备好可读的书报，可涂改的稿子，不想盯着别人的裤子鞋子一路过去，就只有去看那些形形色色的广告。

地铁上的广告，看多了也烦：看皮肤病的Dr.Z，关心你被高跟鞋折磨的脚的足科医师，帮你离婚帮你索赔的律师，这个啤酒，那个假期， 还有捷运总署孜孜不倦的教诲“走路当心”，“不推不攘”，“积德让位”，“不要施钱”。。。 除了英文，还有西班牙文版，实在闷得无聊，可以想象着读西班牙文，看多了就像懂那么一点的样子。

如果运气好，你会抬眼看到地铁里最酷的广告：捷运和B&N书店合出的"移动的诗"--poetry in motion. 虽说都是浅显易懂的句子,却可以把你转移到另一个空间里去. 比如说这首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.

或者这首警世的 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.

要么是现实的 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.

还有浪漫的节选:

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)

你甚至会发现原来杜甫的诗也可以这么现代:

-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.

最让我感动的却是这一首华裔女诗人 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.

赶紧低下头,不让旁人看见眼里的泪光.