一首英文诗

下面这首英文诗是在《The Best American Poetry 2001》一书中收录的，作者是美国诗人LOUISE GLUCK.                              

                                   Time

           There was too much, always, then too little.
           Childhood: sickness.
           By the side of the bed I had a little bell-
           at the other end of the bell, my mother.

           Sickness, gray rain. The dogs slept through it. They slept on the bed,
           at the end of it, and it seemed to me they understood
           about childhood: best to remain unconscious.

           The rain made gray slats on the windows.
           I sat with my book, the little bell beside me.
           Without hearing a voice, I apprenticed myself to a voice.
           Without seeing any sign of the spirit, I determined to live in the spirit.

           The rain faded in and out.
           Month after month, in the space of a day.
           Things became dreams; dreams became things.

           Then I was well; the bell went back to the cupboard.
           The rain ended. The dogs stood at the door,
           panting to go outside.
           
           I was well, then I was an adult.
           And time went on-it was like the rain,
           so much, so much, as though it was a weight that couldn't be moved.

           I was a child, half sleeping.
           I was sick; I was protected.
           And I lived in the world of the spirit,
           the world of the gray rain,
           the lost,  the remembered.

           Then suddenly the sun was shining.
           And time went on, even when there was almost none left.
           And the perceived became the remembered,
           the remembered, the perceived.