Tony Hoagland《Self-Improvement》
来源：金玉米 编辑：admin
时间：2020-04-24
Self-Improvement
By: Tony Hoagland
Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents' summer home,
Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.
Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.
Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.
Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue's exhausted oar.
Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apres-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.
Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.
Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing
is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.
The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.
So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.
自修
Tony Hoagland著 长风译
她像天鹅般飞赴
有钱父母的度假别墅。
行前，布鲁斯的大学女友吩咐
他需要提高口交的技艺，
同时还提供些技术性的建议：
完全用舌尖
来操纵房间电灯的开关。
每天一百次，
直到他技艺娴熟，
运用自如。
想象一下他在每个夜里，
以超过对代数的热情练习，
额头冒出豆大的汗珠，
三十七，三十八，默默地记数，
同时浮现在他脑海里的是：
一元二次方程般高潮中的她
在他简单的加法前
彻底臣服。
也许他已经卸掉
天花板上的灯泡，
这样，路过的人不会以为
在13B寝室有个肚子忽明忽暗
巨大的萤火虫。
他在黑暗中
离墙咫尺之遥，
呼出的水汽凝结在墙面的石膏，
他似乎看到，
自己的舌头如同疲惫的桨叶，
费力地划向
梦想中水边的大厦。
其实，是女朋友甩了他：
她在滑雪之后，邂逅
一个只用鼻子
就能识酒的男人。
有时，别人让我们做
我们并不在行的
事情，
而我们擅长的事情
却永远没有机会来证明。
我们经常问自己，
想找到
失恋的原因。
于是，我们所做的
变得痛苦。
其实每个人都经历过痛苦，
但奇怪的是没有一个人
能学会泰然处之。
剧痛千头万绪，
惨烈，凄美，但私密。
所以我们经过的街头
全是带着面具
而不显山露水的高人：
有的能让钢琴悲吟，
有的能让地面震裂，
还有的能让街灯疯狂地摇曳。
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