一
无用的黎明在荒凉的街角找到我；我已经活过这一夜。
黑夜是高傲的波浪：暗蓝色高大的浪头承载着形形色色极度的废物，和求之不得的事物。
黑夜惯于神秘馈赠和拒绝，给一半留一半，和阴郁的一半同乐。黑夜就是如此行事，我告诉你。
那个黑夜，浪涌留给我日常的琐碎和残留物：某些可憎也可交谈的朋友，梦幻音乐，和苦涩灰烬冒出的烟。对我饥饿的心无用的东西。
大浪带来了你。
言语，任何言语，你的笑声；你那么慵懒又持续的美。我们交谈过但你已忘记说过的话。
破碎的黎明在我的城市一条荒凉的街道找到我。
你转过的身影，使你成名的声音，你轻快的笑声：这些是你留给我的光亮的玩具。
在黎明我交出它们，我失去它们；我对几只流浪狗和几颗流浪的晨星说起它们。
你隐秘丰富的人生…
我必须设法弄清你：我收起你留给我的光亮的玩具，我要看清你的真容，你真实的笑——你的镜子知道的那个孤独嘲讽的笑。
二
我用什么才能留住你？
我愿给你瘦削的街道、绝望的落日、犬牙交错的郊区的月亮。
我愿给你一个久望孤月的男人的苦楚。
我愿给你我的先辈，逝去的亲人，生者用大理石祭奠的亡魂：在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿他的肺，胡子拉碴，死了，被他的士兵用牛皮裹起；我母亲的祖父——年仅二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋，如今成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我愿给你我书中可能蕴含的一切洞见，我生活中不论什么样的男子气魄或幽默。
我愿给你一个从未忠诚过的男人的忠诚。
我愿给你我不知怎么就保全下来的自身的内核——那与语言无关（不以文字描述），没有梦想（不与梦交易），未被时间，喜悦，逆境触动过的核心。
我愿给你在夕阳中看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆，远在你出生之前。
我愿给你对你自己的诠释，有关你自己的论述，你自己真实而意想不到的消息。
我能给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；我正尽力用不确定、危险、失败贿赂你。
（林木译）
TWO ENGLISH POEMS
Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: dark blue top heavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.
2
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather -just twenty four- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
