城市规划员
驾车漫游在周日下午的居民区
枯燥的八月阳光之下
我被这整洁冒犯：
房子学究式排列，人工栽培的树木
干干净净，确保表面的平整
像是在谴责我们撞瘪了的车门
没有喊叫，也无
玻璃的破碎声
在受压制的草地上剪出笔直的长条
割草机理性的轰鸣
是这里听到的最鲁莽声音
车道平平
化解了一切的歇斯底里
所有的屋顶以相同的斜角
回避着火热的天空，，，
但总有些渗漏的机油
车库里飘荡着轻微的臭味
墙砖上泼溅的污斑怪如淤青
塑料管卷成了不怀好意的套圈，甚至
窗户也大张眼睛，虎视眈眈
关注它们
你就关注到
将来泥灰开裂之后的
景象
那时，房屋倾倒
斜斜地没入泥之大海
过程慢如冰川
此刻无人知觉
那就是城市规划员站立的地方
面孔疯癫，如政治阴谋家
布满未经测量的区域
隐藏在彼此私有的暴风雪之中
猜测未来的方向
他们画出临时的线条
在消失的空气中的墙上
像木质的边界般严格
追着城郊的惊慌
在大雪温和的狂乱中
确定出
秩序
The City Planners
By Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows
