希尼诗三首
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Follower
My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
Station Island (Section XII)
Like a convalescent, I took the hand
stretched down from the jetty, sensed again
an alien comfort as I stepped on ground
to find the helping hand still gripping mine,
fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide
or to be guided I could not be certain
for the tall man in step at my side
seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush
upon his ash plant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Then I knew him in the flesh
out there on the tarmac" among the cars, blacktop surface
wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.
His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers
came back to me, though he did not speak yet,
a voice like a prosecutor's or a singer's,
cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite
as a steel nib's downstroke, quick and clean,
and suddenly he hit a litter basket
with his stick, saying, "Your obligation
is not discharged by any common rite.
What you must do must be done on your own
so get back in harness. The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here. And don't be so earnest,
let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You've listened long enough. Now strike your note."
It was as if I had stepped free into space
alone with nothing that I had not known
already. Raindrops blew in my face
as I came to. "Old father, mother's son,
there is a moment in Stephen's diary
for April the thirteenth, a revelation
set among my stars—that one entry
has been a sort of password in my ears,
the collect of a new epiphany,
the Feast of the Holy Tundish." "Who cares,"
he jeered, "any more? The English language
belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,
a waste of time for somebody your age.
That subject people stuff is a cod's game,
infantile, like your peasant pilgrimage.
You lose more of yourself than you redeem
doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it's time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea."
The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac
fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly
the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk
昨天母亲节和爸妈聊天，想起希尼，于是又把大四时英国现代诗课上的选集和笔记拿出来读。希尼早期常描写家乡的农村生活场景及父子关系，“Digging”便是其中一例。诗人手中的笔与父亲的铁锹，一样朴实；写作与刨土，一样是耕耘。笔与锹，既是继承，但也是背离。沙沙的声音，有理解或不理解，包容或不包容。诗人和父亲，各自含蓄地耕耘着。我想我和希尼一样，I'll dig with it.
英国现代诗的课每次读一位诗人，希尼是诗歌的最后一课，也是我本科阶段的最后一课。而“Station Island”正是这最后一课讲的最后一首诗。我还记得当时快下课的情形，有些伤感却又觉得突兀，有点仪式感，但其实也有些不耐烦。在这首长诗的最后一章，希尼想象自己与偶像乔伊斯的相遇，"The main thing is to write for the joy of it." “Let go, let fly, forget.” 当时课上还不觉得，但今天重读发现我正需要一首这样的诗。准确的说，是过去一年让我逐渐认识到，自己是多么需要一首这样的诗。我知道自己不是自由和冒险的人，所以刻意任由自己被其他的人和事所打断。我需要被打断，才能打开自己，而我想打开自己。而乔伊斯对希尼说道，走吧，飞吧，忘记吧，你听的已经足够多了，奏响你自己的音符吧。被打断是不够的，你必须自己启程，现在，马上，就是此刻。说到这里，森林里的雨骤然变大，正如顿悟终会向乔伊斯的人物袭来，大雨也向诗里的“我”袭来。说话的人已走远，“我”站在雨里。这是我从诗里看到的。
或许我没有真的读懂希尼吧，我只是从他身上看到了自己，看到了有我的那一部分。但至少，我想把今天读到的这一部分先抄在这里。诗常读常新。整理完这三首诗的思绪，才发现又度过了漫长的一天。