2012年纽约布鲁克林的黑人女诗人特雷西•K•史密斯（Tracy K. Smith）凭借第三部诗集《火星生活》（Life on Mars）摘得普利策诗歌奖桂冠，这是她收到的一份特殊的40岁生日礼物。普利策奖委员会形容这本诗集“大胆、巧妙，将读者带上宇宙，并让他们真实感受到了快乐与苦痛。”《火星生活》将我们带到很远的地方，同时也正接近我们的家园，正如诗中写道：“我们是他物的一部分，而不仅仅是一名过客。”她的诗风格纯熟，语言玄妙。史密斯首部出版的作品为《身体的问题》（The Body’s Question）（2003），在2007年时完成了第二部诗集《魔力》（Duende）。
获奖诗歌选译--
My God, It’s Full of Stars 天啊，它遍布星星
1
We like to think of it as parallel to what we know,
Only bigger. One man against the authorities.
Or one man against a city of zombies. One man
我们喜欢把它想成我们熟知的世界，
只是更大。一人对抗权威，
或对抗满城的僵尸。一人
Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand
The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants
Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run
事实上他不是人，派去理解，
一行人群起而攻之，像红蚁
跑掉美洲的裤子。人在逃离。
Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop,
This message going out to all of space. . . . Though
Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent,
这人要赶船，要卸货，
这信息传遍整个太空……即使
它也许更像海底的生活：沉寂，
Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics
Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine
A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars,
浮动着，异常柔和。像设计过时的
圣物。有人把它想成
宇宙之母透过喷雾状的星子观看
Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light,
Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing
To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best
嘴说是的，就这样，当我们朝着光明蹒跚前行，
咬紧她的嘴唇，如果我们在某个边缘摇摇欲坠。渴望
将我们一揽入怀，她抱最好的希望。
While the father storms through adjacent rooms
Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come,
Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw.
而父亲的暴怒响彻相邻的房间，
以"天国降临"的力量咆哮，
并不关心什么会把我们嚼碎吞噬。
Sometimes, what I see is a library in a rural community.
All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils
In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.
有时，我看到的是一所乡村社区图书馆。
敞开的阅览室里所有高大的书架。一些铅笔
在借阅台上的杯子里，被所有人啃咬过。
The books have lived here all along, belonging
For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,
书籍始终在这里，依次
在不同姓氏的人手里呆上数周，
对一张脸（多半在夜晚），
A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies.
和一双眼诉说。最出色的谎言。
2.
Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely.
A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time,
He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white.
查尔顿·赫斯顿等着进去。他客气地请求一次。
第二次从隔膜发力。第三次，
他像摩西：双臂高举，面色伪经般苍白。
Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in,
Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture,
Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires
衬衫笔挺，外套整洁，他微弯着腰进来，
然后挺直。他扫了一眼房间。他站着，直到我示意，
才坐下。鸟开始入夜的啁啾。有人在楼下外面
Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t.
I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back.
That was the future once, he says. Before the world went upside down.
点燃木炭。假如我有他会喝威士忌。没有就喝水。
我要他从头讲起，但他从半当中开始。
那时也曾是未来，他说。在世界颠倒之前。
Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank
Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.
He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,
英雄，幸存者，上帝右手边的人，我知道他看到月球空白的
表面，那里我看到用砖骨堆砌的语言。
他端坐在那，缓缓吸了一口极具悲剧色彩的长气，
Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And:
May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.
Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.
然后呼出。就我所知，我是这个地球上最后一个真男人。又说：
我可以抽烟吗？外面的声音软化了。喷射飞机飞去或飞回。
有人哭闹着她不想去睡觉。头顶有脚步声。
A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air
Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again.
We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth
邻居院子里的喷泉自言自语，夜晚的空气
抬高室内的声音。那是另一次，他说，重新拾起话题。
我们是开拓先锋。你会不会为了生存而战，骑着地球
Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone
One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.
Our eyes adjust to the dark.
向着神不知鬼不觉的地方？我想到埋在冰下的亚特兰蒂斯，有一天
从视线消失，它曾经矗立的海岸如今冰冷荒凉。
我们的眼睛适应了黑暗。
3.
Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,
That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—
When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,
Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel
Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,
Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,
Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones
At whatever are their moons. They live wondering
If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,
And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.
也许最大的错误就是相信我们是孤单的，
其他人来了又走——昙花一现——
也可能从来太空就交通拥挤，
以我们并未察觉和见到的能量爆射
冲向我们，活着，死去，决定，
在行星上四处脚踏实地，
向操纵一切的伟大星球鞠躬，
朝它们的月亮投石。他们活在好奇里
是否只有他们，想知而不可知，
在广漠夜空中，他们——我们——闪烁其间
Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,
Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on
At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns
Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be
One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.
Wide open, so everything floods in at once.
And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,
Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.
So that I might be sitting now beside my father
As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe
For the first time in the winter of 1959.
也许死者知道，他们终于睁大了眼睛，
看到百万个星系的高光在黄昏
闪耀。听着引擎轰响，喇叭
长鸣，处在狂热之中。我想成为
喧闹下的一个缺口，就像一个拿掉旋钮的收音机。
敞开，所有一切一起涌来。
再紧紧密封，因此无法逃脱。甚至时间也不行，
它本该卷曲在自身里，像烟雾环绕。
以便我现在可以坐在我父亲身边
当他拿起火柴点燃烟斗
那是第一次，于1959年的冬天。
4.
In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001
When Dave is whisked into the center of space,
Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light
Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid
For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid,
Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off,
Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent
And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . .
在库布里克《2001》的最后几幕场景里
当大伍被送到太空中心，
它于高潮光晕中展开
在完全绽放之前，像丛林兰花
对于坠入爱河的蜜蜂，然后变成液体，
水中油彩，然后薄纱般飘出飘远，
在最后发光模糊的夜潮
不停漩入之前……
In those last scenes, as he floats
Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas,
Over the lava strewn plains and mountains
Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink.
In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked
Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time,
Who knows what blazes through his mind?
Is it still his life he moves through, or does
That end at the end of what he can name?
在那最后几幕场景里，当他漂流
在木星巨大的峡谷和海洋上，
越过散落着熔岩的冰封的平原
和山峦，整个过程中，他不眨一眼。
在他的小飞船里，他看不清乘着什么，飞越
绵延宽广的时间长河，
谁知道什么在他脑海中燃烧？
他仍在穿越自己的生命，或者
它在他可以命名的那一端结束？
On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy,
Then the costumes go back on their racks
And the great gleaming set goes black.
现场镜头拍了又拍，直到库布里克感到满意，
然后，服饰放回到架子原处
巨大闪光的场地变得一片漆黑。
5.
When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said
They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed
In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white.
我父亲在哈勃太空望远镜上工作时，他说：
他们像外科医生一样操作，擦洗然后套在
纸质的绿色里，房间寒冷，洁白。
He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,
His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,
When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled
他在家里读拉里·尼文，喝加冰块的苏格兰威士忌，
他的眼睛疲乏并布满血丝。这是里根时代，
我们把手指放在“按钮”上苟且偷生，并试图
To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise
把我们的敌人当作孩子。我父亲用整个季节
躬身在天眼前，渴望发现些什么。
每当有人问起，他便会脸庞发亮，手臂高举
As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.
仿佛他失重了，于永无止境的夜太空里
泰然自若。在地面，我们把明信片绑在气球上，
为了和平。查尔斯王子和戴安娜女士结婚。洛克·哈德森去世了。
We learned new words for things. The decade changed.
我们学会了用新单词描绘事物。这十年发生了变化。
The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—
最初传回的几张照片模糊不清，我感到惭愧
为所有欢快的工程师，我的父亲和他的部落。第二次，
光学仪器调准了。我们目之所及的边缘
So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.
如此残酷而充满活力，它似乎反过来理解我们。
（林木译）
这篇译作得到京燕的修改指正，特此致谢！
