《What Can I Hold You With》-Borges

What can I hold you with?我拿什么才能留住你？

I offer you lean streets, 我給你瘦落的街道，

desperate sunsets, 絕望的落日，

the moon of the jagged suburbs. 荒郊的月亮，

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

我給你一個久久地望著孤月的人的悲哀。

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men,

我給你我已死去的祖輩，

the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:

后人們用大理石祭奠的先魂，

my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires,

我父親的父親，陣亡于布宜諾斯艾利斯的邊境，

two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead,

兩顆子彈射穿了他的胸膛，死的時候蓄著胡子，

wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;

尸體被士兵們用牛皮裹起；

my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour-

我母親的祖父——那年才二十四歲——

heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú,

在秘魯率領(lǐng)三百人沖鋒，

now ghosts on vanished horses.

如今都成了消失的馬背上的亡魂。

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold.

我給你我的書中所能蘊含的一切悟力，

whatever manliness or humour my life. 以

及我生活中所能有的男子氣概和幽默，

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

我給你一個從未有過信仰的人的忠誠。

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart

我給你我設(shè)法保全的我自己的核心，

that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams

不營字造句，不和夢交易，

and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

不被時間、歡樂和逆境觸動的核心。

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

我給你早在你出生前多年的一個傍晚看到的一朵黃玫瑰的記憶。

I offer you explanations of yourself,

我給你關(guān)于你生命的詮釋，

theories about yourself,

關(guān)于你自己的理論，

authentic and surprising news of yourself.

你的真實而驚人的存在。

I can give you my loneliness,

我給你我的寂寞，

my darkness,

我的黑暗，

the hunger of my heart;

我心的饑渴，

I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

我試圖用困惑、危險、失敗來打動你。