四个四重奏:第24期 干燥的萨尔维吉斯(5)
We have to think of them as forever bailing, setting and hauling, while the North East lowers over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
我们应该想起他们一如既往在戽水，在张网和拉网，当那东北风势减弱吹过永不变化也永不销蚀的浅提，
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
或者在船坞领取鱼钱，晒晾风帆；
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
而不应该想象他们在作一次毫无收益的出航，
For a haul that will not bear examination.
打一网经不起审查的捕捞。
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
那无声的呜咽永无穷期，
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
那秋花的谢去，
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
没有痛苦也没有运动的痛苦的运动，
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
海的冲卷和漂流的沉船残骸，
The bone’s prayer to Death its God.
白骨向它的上帝死神的祈求，这一切都永无穷期。
Only the hardly, barely prayable prayer of the one Annunciation.
只有圣母报喜节那一声几乎是不可能却又是唯一苦难祈求的祈求。
It seems, as one becomes older, that the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence —
当你年岁渐老，那过去仿佛已有了另一种模式，不再只是一个结果——
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
或者甚至是一种发展：后者是部分的谬误，受到肤浅的进化论思想的怂恿，
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
而在常人的心目中变成否认自己的过去的一种手段。
The moments of happiness — not the sense of well-being,
赏心乐事的瞬间——不是康泰之感，
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination —
功成名就，夙愿已偿，无忧无虑或感受到亲人之爱，甚至不是享用一顿丰美酒宴，而是猛地或然彻悟——
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
我们有过这种经验，但没有领会其中涵义，
And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness.
而懂得涵义就是在我们能赋予幸福以任何意义之外，在不同的形式中恢复以往的经验。