我用什么才能留住你？
我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落、破败郊区的月亮。
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
我给你我已死去的先辈，
人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵…
（在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，绪着胡子的他死去了，士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。）
我给你我写的书中所包含的一切悟力、
我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心——
不营字造句，不和梦想交易，
不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我给你你对自己的解释，关于你自己的理论，
你自己的真实而惊人的消息。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；
我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。
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 bronze:
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 twentyfour-- heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, 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.
