Allen Ginsberg - Last Night in Calcutta 汉译

Still night. The old clock Ticks,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

half past two. A ringing of crickets

awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked

on the street outside--sleepers, mustaches,

nakedness, but no desire. A few mosquitos

waken the itch, the fan turns slowly--

a car thunders along the black asphalt,

a bull snorts, something is expected--

Time sits solid in the four yellow walls.

No one is here, emptiness filled with train

whistles & dog barks, answered a block away.

Pushkin sits on the bookshelf, Shakespeare's

complete works as well as Blake's unread--

O Spirit of Poetry, no use calling on you

babbling in this emptiness furnished with beds

under the bright oval mirror--perfect

night for sleepers to dissolve in tranquil

blackness, and rest there eight hours

--Waking to stained fingers, bitter mouth

and lung gripped by cigarette hunger,

what to do with this big toe, this arm

this eye in the starving skeleton-filled

sore horse tramcar-heated Calcutta in

Eternity--sweating and teeth rotted away--

Rilke at least could dream about lovers,

the old breast excitement and trembling belly,

is that it? And the vast starry space--

If the brain changes matter breathes

fearfully back on man--But now

the great crash of buildings and planets

breaks thru the walls of language and drowns

me under its Ganges heaviness forever.

No escape but thru Bangkok and New York death.

Skin is sufficient to be skin, that's all

it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney

make it sick of itself, a wavy dream

dying to finish its all to famous misery

--Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool,

not get stuck in the corner of the universe

sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.

 

1968