沃尔夫之树 - 波城凡人译
JD MaClatchy遗笔 - 麦老是美国著名诗人，于几日前去世 （1945 - 2018），特译此诗予以悼念！只是意译，露误之处，请各位高人指点！
树倒林中无人知，仅成悲欢字下纸。
活时曾经自成行，徒为夕阳增娇姿。
更伴夏屋顶上瓦，倒映叶上空和寂。
眼前流年如何了，年久无瑕难顾及。
未读已知情已了，好似窗开舍无密。
已知书中人为伊，守在林边无目的。
若知哪树就是伊，伊也可能把君期。
林中来去人当多，只有君独知其秘。
--- 为沃尔夫.康恩而写。 康恩是个以画树和森林为长的画家，题目先译为狼是意译，不妥，但博文题目为简保留狼树。
Wolf’s Trees
If trees fall in a wood and no one hears them,
Do they exist except as a page of lines
That words of rapture or grief are written on?
They are lines too while alive, pointing away
From the primer of damped air and leafmold
That underlie, or would if certain of them
Were not melon or maize, solferino or smoke,
Colors into which a sunset will collapse
On a high branch of broken promises.
Or they nail the late summer’s shingles of noon
Back onto the horizon’s overlap, reflecting
An emptiness visible on leaves that come and go.
How does a life flash before one’s eyes
At the end? How is there time for so much time?
You pick up the book and hold it, knowing
Long since the failed romance, the strained
Marriage, the messenger, the mistake,
Knowing it all at once, as if looking through
A lighted dormer on the dark crest of a barn.
You know who is inside, and who has always been
At the other edge of the wood. She is waiting
For no one in particular. It could be you.
If you can discover which tree she has become,
You will know whether it has all been true.
for Wolf Kahn
J. D. McClatchy was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on August 12, 1945. He authored eight books of poetry, including Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. In 1991, he received a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 to 2003. He lived in Stonington, Connecticut, until his death on April 10, 2018.
