有人
有人说得太多，有人一生沉默
有人“在奥斯维辛演奏小提琴
就像在尸体上跳舞”
有人在黑暗中保持着灼人的视力
面对强光眼睛却瞎了
有人写灾难的诗，也有人请我写
就像在尸体上跳舞
有人再次走上红地毯，有人
折入一条森林小径
满地松针，比我们的眼睛湿润
2023，12
Someone
Someone talks too much, someone lives in silence
Someone says: “playing a violin in Auschwitz
is just like dancing on a corpse”
Someone’s eyes burn in the dark
But are blinded by bright light
Someone writes disaster poems, others ask me to do so
Just like dancing on a corpse
Someone walks down the red carpet again, someone
Turns down a small path through the woods
Pine needles carpeting the ground, moister than our eyes
November 2023
航线
——致简·赫斯菲尔德
从东京湾转机到纽约，过了白令海，便进入北美上空，
在机翼划出的带轻烟的嗖嗖声中，
我向下看到的，竟是皑皑雪山和冰川……
好像是我终生不遇的一道奇观，
大地的一阵奇寒……
“你是幸运的，你走的是靠北极的北方航线，
不然你会看到满天烟雾。
南加州，一场噩梦——
圣莫尼卡的居民已被疏散，
你知道吗，它就离布莱希特流亡时住的地方不远……”
哦，布莱希特！
从一场烟雾逃向另一场烟雾。
就在你忧心忡忡地察看火势和风向的时候，
我们飞过北海道，飞向阿拉斯加，
仿佛重返冰川纪。
接过一罐日本空姐递来的沁凉的札幌啤酒，
我想起了我读过的川端康成的《雪国》，
你知道它的结局吗？
它的结局是一场冲天大火。
哦，冰与火。
这个世界的冰与火！
你是对的，你提到的那条佛经让我心里一惊——
“我们生活在燃烧的房子里。”
而解脱的人从雪国走来，把自己献给虚无。
无助者祈祷。
旁观者的眼睛即使在高空之上
也会被火星灼伤。
没有幸运的人。
没有可以拔着自己头发升天的人。
火舌飞进我们每一个人的房间里，
浓烟要让我们窒息。
（被烧掉一只耳朵的野兔早早就蹦进了
伊丽莎白·毕肖普的一首诗里。）
而我再次抬眼望去——
机翼下的冰川已经半裸，
更远处的那一大片白斑，也就是格陵兰岛，
转向了地球的另一边，处在
一场帝国梦的最边缘。
而我被绑在我的座位上。
而救火的人正在火海的惊涛下
拼命冒烟跑动。
而你的眼睛也就是一场火灾吗，
我还得再写一首冰川的旁注之诗吗，
我的航线永远在
冰与火中穿行。
2025，1，25，纽约
*参见伊丽莎白·毕肖普《犰狳――给罗伯特·洛厄尔》。
**参见穆旦《诗八首·一》“你的眼睛看见这一场火灾”。
Flight Path
—for Jane Hirshfield
Switched planes at Tokyo Bay for New York,
crossed the Bering Sea,
then entered North American air space，
Amid the whoosh of the wings and the smoking trails,
I looked down and saw vast snow-covered mountains and glaciers…
A never-before-beheld spectacle，
The earth strangely cold…
“You’re lucky, you took the polar route,
Otherwise you’d only see smoke filled sky.
Southern California, it’s a nightmare—
The residents of Santa Monica have been evacuated,
Not far from where Brecht lived in exile, you know…”
O, Bertolt Brecht!
Fleeing from smoke to smoke.
As you anxiously gauged the blaze and wind direction,
We flew over Hokkaido to Alaska
As if returning to the ice age.
Taking an ice-cold Sapporo beer the JAL stewardess handed me,
I recalled Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country,
Do you know how it ends?
It ends in a conflagration.
O, fire and ice.
The fire and ice of this world!
You’re right, that Buddhist sutra you mentioned is startling—
“We live in a burning house.”*
The liberated one comes from the snow country, offering himself to the void.
The helpless offer prayers.
The eyes of the beholders, though high above the sky
Are scorched by flames.
No one is lucky.
No one can pull out their hair and go to heaven.
Tongues of fire lick all our homes,
The thick smoke seeks to suffocates us.
(The wild hare with a burned ear hopped into
A poem by Elizabeth Bishop.)**
And I lift my eyes again—
A half-naked glacier below the plane,
The white patch farther off is Greenland,
Almost the far side of the earth, on the edge
Of an imperial dream.
And I’m strapped in my seat.
And the firefighters scurry for their lives
Through the sea of fire raging below.
Are your eyes also a conflagration?***
Must I write another marginal poem about glaciers?
My path forever seems to go
Through fire and ice.
01,25, 2025，New York
* See chapter 3 of the Lotus Sutra
**See Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Armadillo”
***See Mu Dan’s poetic sequence Eight Poems, 1 “Your Eyes Have Seen this Conflagration.”
《与此同时》（At the Same Time，New and Selected Poems, by Wang Jiaxin, Translated by John Balcom）亚马逊网站有售：https://a.co/d/5u4TU0C
《与此同时》的名家推荐语：
王家新是中国诗坛的一个领军人物。他的诗歌创作是国际性的，并因现代历史的悲剧而彰显黑色冷峻的气质——他的诗作或有挽歌之痛，或有格言之警，并充满渴求——他的写作是激越的聚焦，也是无畏的注视。他的诗作现场即时，又紧扣心弦。
——施家彰
Wang Jiaxin is one of the leading poets of China. His poems are international in scope, darkened by the tragedies of modern history ——poems by turn elegiac, aphoristic, suffused with longing —— and he writes with intense focus and with unflinching gaze. His poems are immediate and thrilling.
—— Arthur Sze
《与此同时》收录了一些王家新最好的诗作。他是中国当代诗坛的一个重要声音。这些诗作展现了成熟的思考，与众不同的发声，独到的眼光，宽广的视野，还有更重要的，一种真诚的精神。
——哈金
At the Same Time gathers some of best poems by Wang Jiaxin, a major voice of contemporary Chinese poetry. Together these poems show a mature mind, a distinct voice, a peculiar eye, a broad vision and above all, a genuine spirit.
—— Ha Jin
如果我们同意查尔斯·斯密奇的说法：所有诗歌的秘密祈望都是停止时间，那么很显然王家新是个祈望已经得到回答的人——在当今日子和年代里，这是个了不起的成就。王家新的诗吸引我的是，在这永恒的时刻、和更广阔的世界持续不断地进行对话。一个灵魂，或许是孤独的同义词，但是这个灵魂一直在对话，用如歌的询问呈现的优美（对话）——对此，我最为心怀感激。
—— 伊利亚·卡明斯基
If we agree with Charles Simic that the secret wish of all lyric poetry is to stop time, Wang Jiaxin is certainly a man whose wishes have been answered —— a remarkable acievement in this day and age. This ongoing conversation with the larger world in the timeless moment is what draws me to Wang Jiaxin's poems. A soul might be synonym for solitude, but herein the soul is in conversation, a beautiful thing of lyric inquiry —— for which I am most grateful.
—— Ilya Kaminsky
在一个语言往往是重重迷雾的时代，《与此同时》带来了一种本真事物的喜悦。每一首诗都打开思路，眼睛和心灵。每首诗都带来发现。王家新和伟大诗人及哲学家们的多种对话，自带不同流俗的视野、透视、激情和权威：一种坚如磐石的凝视和话语。一个世界诗人从这些真灼有力的翻译里进入英语世界。为了读者们的关注，我的褒赞，无论多高，都不为过。
—— 简·赫斯菲尔德
In an age when words are too often fog banks, At the Same Time brings the happiness of the real thing. Each poem opens thought, eyes, and heart. Each poem carries discovery. Wang Jiaxin's many dialogs with the great poets and philosophers carry his own distinctive vision, perspective, compassion, and authority: a bedrock looking and saying. A world poet comes into English in these powerful poems' translations. I can't commend it highly enough to readers' attention.
—— Jane Hirshfield
当我阅读王家新诗作的时候，一件稀奇的事情发生了：我有了写诗的触动。我不太了解他的体验，但对我来说，这意味着我正在读的这些诗有着非同寻常的力量。在这些浓缩了的诗歌里，一首接着一首，我感觉到洞察力的闪光，文学变身为启示录、乃至超自然的神谕。还有意识到这一点时的惊羡，哦！这就是这个世界上有智慧生物的证据呀。
—— 罗斯安娜·沃伦
A rare thing happened as I read Wang Jiaxin's poems" I felt stirred to write poems. I don't know much about his experience, but for me it's a sign of some unusual force in the poems I'm reading. In these compressed lyric poems, in poem affter poem, I felt the flash of perception, the transformation of the literal into the revealed, even the metaphysical. And the startlement of recognizing, oh! Here's evidence of intelligent life on earth.
—— Rosanna Warren
本辑所选诗作的英译均选自王家新英译诗选 At the Same Time（《与此同时》）, New and Selected Poems, Translated by John Balcom, Arrowsmith Press, 2025.
原载北美中文作家协会会刊《东西》第 472 期
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