Philip Larkin - Fiction and the Reading Public 汉译

Give me a thrill, say the reader,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Give me a kick;

I don’t care how you succeed, or

What subject you pick,

Choose something you know all about

That’ll sound like real life:

Your childhood, you Dad pegging out,

How you sleep with your wife.

But that’s not sufficient, unless

You make me feel good—

Whatever you’re trying to express’

Let it be understood

That ‘somehow’ God plaits up the threads,

Makes ‘all for the best’,

That we may lie quiet in our beds

And not be ‘depressed’.

For all the tune in this racket:

I pay your screw,

Write reviews and the bull on the jacket—

So stop looking blue

And start serving up your sensations

Before it’s too late;

Just please me for two generations

You’ll be ‘Truly great’.