邂逅在裸体温泉 (图)

watercolor by H. Y.

美 国 新 诗 赏 读




An Encounter


We met naked on the sun deck by the
clothing-optional hot springs,
and I saw the long scar
like a smile across his furred abdomen
where they'd cut the cancer out of him.
He trained people in death and dying,
he told me;
divorced, he'd recently discovered poetry.

We talked as if my loose breasts
were not flopping companionably
against the knee I hugged to my chest.
Sunlight pooled on the wooden deck
like soup--sun soup. A woman did yoga
by the railing, her slender arms
assailing heaven.


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I confessed that I am afraid to die
with poems unsaid inside me,
and he said, "You will.
You'll die with a great poem in your heart
that will never see paper."

We were quiet then. A bee buzzed
perilously close to my sweaty thigh,
and I heard it: I heard
the danger and sweetness inside everything.



Copyrighted by Alison Luterman



这是一位女诗人的作品。

“裸露”是诗和艺术中常见的比喻。它可以直喻肉体和情色，也可以暴露人性的柔美和脆弱。在这首平缓、直叙的诗里，女主人公与陌生的异性“邂逅”，而且是裸露的。但是，她和他的对话更裸露坦诚，似乎是对“裸体”的讽刺。因为肉体的裸露并非表示灵魂的坦荡、坦诚。

短短一首诗，在一个看似特殊的环境中折射了一个成熟灵魂对生、死的认知过程，以诗为载体，超越了对女主人公“对死的恐惧”。-- Z.Z.