2006/01/28

New Life
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引き続きJoseph Brodskyの詩集So Forthから、ベルリンの壁の崩壊する１年前、１９８８年に書いた詩、New Lifeを。詩人は預言者だとは、詩人が自らの詩で歌わなくともそうである。不易流行。本質は変わらない。その変わらない言葉を。方針に従い、最初に全部の詩を掲げることにしよう。

【原文】
Imagine that war is over, that peace has resumed its reign.
That you can still make a mirror. That it's a cuckoo
or a magpie, and not a Junkers, that chirps in the twigs again.
That a window frames not a town's rubble but its rococo,
palms, magnolias, pine trees, tenacious ivy, grass,
laurel. That the cast-rion lace the moon used to shepherd
clouds in, in the end endured the onslaught of mimosa, plus
bursts of agave. That life must start from the very threshold.

People exit their rooms, where chairs like the letter b or else
h shield them from vertigo on occasion.
They are of use to nobody save themselves,
pavement flagstones, the rules of multiplication.
Thatﾕs the impact of statues. Of their empty niches, more
accurately. Well, falling sanctity, one still can use its byword.
Imagine that this is all true. Imagine you speak of your-
self while speaking of them, of anything extra, sideward.

Life starts anew indeed like this --- with a painted view
of a volcanic eruption, of a dinghy high waves beleaguer.
With the attendant feeling it's only you
who survey the disaster. With the feeling that you are eager
to shift your gaze any moment, catch sight of a couch, a blast
of peonies in a Chinese vase, sallow against the plaster.
Their garish colors, their wilting mouths must
be, in their turn, harbingers of a disaster.

Each thing is vulnerable. The very thought about
a thing gets quickly forgotten. Things are, in truth, the leeches
of thought. Hence their shapes ----- each one is a brainﾕs cutout ---
their attachment to place, their Penelope features;
that is their taste for the future. At sunrise, a roosterﾕs heard.
Stepping out of the tub, wrapped in a bedsheetﾕs linen
in a hotel in the new life, you face the herd
of four-legged furniture, mahogany and cast iron.

Imagine that epics shrink into idylls. That words are but
the converse of flame's long tongues, of that raging sermon
which used to devour your betters greedily like dry wood.
That flame found it difficult to determine
your worth, not to mention warmth. Thatﾕs why youﾕve survived intact.
Thatﾕs why you can stomach apathy, thatﾕs why you feel fit to mingle
with the pomonae, vertumni, ceres this place is packed
with. Thatﾕs why on your lips is this shepherdﾕs jingle.

For how long can one justify oneself? However you hide the ace,
the table gets hit with jacks of some odd suit and tailor.
Imagine that the more sincere the voice, the less in it is the trace
of love for no matter what, of anger, of tears, of terror.
Imagine your wireless catching at times your old anthemﾕs hum.
Imagine that here, too, each letter is trailed by a weaning
retinue of its likes, forming blindly now ﾒbetsy, ﾒ now ﾒibrahim,ﾓ
dragging the pen past the limits of alphabet and meaning.

Twilight in the new life. Cicadas that don't relent.
A classicist perspective that lacks a tank or,
barring that, dank fog patches to obfuscate its end;
a bare parquet floor that never sustained a tango.
In the new life, no one begs the moment, "Stay!"
Brought to a standstill, it quickly succumbs to dotage.
And your features, on top of that, are glazed enough anyway
for scratching their matter side with "Hi" and attaching the postage.

The white stuccoed walls of a room are turning more white because
of a glance shot in their direction and boding censure,
steeped not so much in far meadows' morose repose
as in the spectrum's lack of their self-negating tincture.
A thing can be pardoned plenty. Especially where it cones,
where it reaches its end. Ultimately, one's unbound
curiosity about these empty zones,
about these objectless vistas, is what art seems to be all about.

In the new life, a cloud is better than the right sun. The rain,
akin to self-knowledge, appears perpetual.
On the other hand, an unexpected train
you donﾕt wait for alone on a platform arrives on schedule.
A sail is passing its judgment on the horizon's lie.
The eye tracks the sinking soap, thought it's the foam that's famous.
And should anyone ask you ﾒWho are you?ﾓ your reply, "Who --- I?
I am Nobody," as Ulysses once muttered to Polyphemus.

1988




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