杰弗斯 诗选 （英文）

Robinson Jeffers，1887-1962

Divinely Superfluous Beauty

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,

Over and under the ocean...

Divinely superfluous beauty

Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees grow

And hills tower, waves fall.

The incredible beauty of joy

Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too

Be joined, there is not a maiden

Burns and thirsts for love

More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the wings

Weave like a web in the air

Divinely superfluous beauty.

1924

Hurt Hawks

1

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,

The wing trails like a banner in defeat, 

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine

And pain a few days: no cat nor coyote

Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits

The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom

And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.

The curs of the day come and torment him

At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,

The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.

The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those

That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.

You do not  know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;

Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;

Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

2

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;

But the great redtail 

Had nothing left but unable misery

From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,

He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,

Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old

Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.

What fell was relaxed, owl-downy, soft feminine feather; but what

Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising

Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.

1928

Love the Wild Swan

'I hate my verse, every line, every word.

Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try 

One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird

That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.

Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch

One color, one glinting

Hash, of the splendor of things.

Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,

The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the strom of the wings.'

--This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.

Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast

Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.

Does it matter whether you hate your...self?

At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can

Hear the music, the thunder of the winds. Love the wild swan.

1935

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