一
无用的黎明在空寂的街角找到我；我比黑夜活得更久。
黑夜是高傲的波浪：头重脚轻的深蓝色波浪承载着各式各样的废物和不可能却渴望的东西。
黑夜有这样的习性：神秘的礼物和拒绝，东西给一半保留一半，带着黑暗半球的欢乐。黑夜就是如此行事，我告诉你。
那个黑夜，涌动留给我习惯性的细线和奇特的端点：某些可憎也可交谈的朋友，梦的音乐，和从令人不快的灰烬冒出的烟。对我饥饿的心而言毫无用处。
大浪带来了你。
文字，任何文字，你的笑声；你如此懒散又持续的美。我们说着但你欲说已忘言。
令人绝望的黎明在我的城市寂静的街道找到我。
你的身影拒绝了构成你名字的声音，你起伏的笑声：这些是你留给我的有名的玩具。
在黎明我把它们交出去，我失去它们；我对几只野狗和几颗流浪的晨星说到它们。
你黑暗而丰富的一生。
我必须设法弄清你：我收起你留给我的有名的玩具，我要看清你的真容，你真实的笑——你的镜子知道的那个孤独嘲讽的笑。
二
我能用什么才能留住你？
我给你贫乏的街道、绝望的落日、荒郊的月亮。
我给你一个长久凝望孤月的人的悲苦。
我给你我的先辈，我死去的人，人们用青铜纪念的亡魂：在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的祖父，两颗子弹射穿他的胸膛，死时蓄着胡子，士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋，如今成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我给你我书中蕴含的洞见，我生活中的男子气概或幽默。
我给你一个从未忠诚过的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的自己的内核，
不经营字句，不贩卖梦想，未曾被时间、欢乐和困境影响过的心脏中心。
我给你在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我让你提供你的诠释，关于你自己的理论，你真实而意外的消息。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心灵的饥渴；
我试图用无常、危险、失败贿赂你。
TWO ENGLISH POEMS
Por Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: dark blue top heavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.
2
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 marble: 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 twenty four- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, 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.
