汉英之间
我居住在汉字的块垒里,
在这些和那些形象的顾盼之间。
它们孤立而贯穿,肢体摇晃不定,
节奏单一如连续的枪。
一片响声之后,汉字变得简单。
掉下了一些胳膊,腿,眼睛。
但语言依然在行走,伸出,以及看见。
那样一种神秘养育了饥饿。
并且,省下很多好吃的日子,
让我和同一种族的人分食,挑剔。
在本地口音中,在团结如一个晶体的方言
在古代和现代汉语的混为一谈中,
我的嘴唇像是圆形废墟,
牙齿陷入空旷
没碰到一根骨头。
如此风景,如此肉,汉语盛宴天下。
我吃完我那份日子,又吃古人的,直到
一天傍晚,我去英语角散步,看见
一群中国人围住一个美国佬,我猜他们
想迁居到英语里面。但英语在中国没有领地。
它只是一门课,一种会话方式,电视节目,
大学的一个系,考试和纸。
在纸上我感到中国人和铅笔的酷似。
轻描淡写,磨损橡皮的一生。
经历了太多的墨水,眼镜,打字机
以及铅的沉重之后,
英语已经轻松自如,卷起在中国的一角。
它使我们习惯了缩写和外交辞令,
还有西餐,刀叉,阿司匹林。
这样的变化不涉及鼻子
和皮肤,像每天早晨的牙刷
英语在牙齿上走着,使汉语变白。
从前吃书吃死人,因此
我天天刷牙,这关系到水,卫生和比较。
由此产生了口感,滋味说
以及日常用语的种种差异。
还关系到一只手,它伸进英语
中指和食指分开,模拟
一个字母,一次胜利,一种
对自我的纳粹式体验。
一支烟落地,只燃到一半就熄灭了
像一段历史。历史就是苦于口吃的
战争,再往前是第三帝国,是希特勒。
我不知道这个狂人是否枪杀过英语,枪杀过
莎士比亚和济慈。
但我知道,有牛津辞典里的、贵族的英语,
也有武装到牙齿的、邱吉尔或罗斯福的英语。
它的隐喻,它的物质,它的破坏的美学
在广岛和长崎爆炸。
我看见一堆堆汉字在日语中变成尸首——
但在语言之外,中国和英美结盟。
我读过这段历史,感到极为可疑。
我不知道历史和我谁更荒谬。
一百多年了,汉英之间,究竟发生了什么?
为什么如此多的中国人移居英语,
努力成为黄种白人,而把汉语
看作离婚的前妻,看作破镜里的家园?究竟
发生了什么?我独自一人在汉语中幽居
与众多纸人对话,空想着英语。
并看着更多的中国人跻身其间
从一个象形的人变为一个拼音的人。
1995,6,于成都
Between Chinese and English
I live between the bricks of Chinese characters,
in glances exchanged between image and image.
They’re separate but continuous, with shifting limbs
and a rhythm uniform as gunfire.
The dust settles: Chinese is simplified.
Off tumble legs, arms, eyes.
But my language still runs, still reaches, sees.
These mysteries give birth to hunger.
And there are plenty of suns and moons left
to linger over with my comrades-in-tongue.
In this vast crystal aggregate of accents and dialects,
this murky admixture of ancient and new,
my mouth is a circular ruin,
teeth plunging into space,
never hitting bone.
Such vistas, such meat: Chinese is a banquet for all.
I eat up my suns and moons, and the ancients’ too, till
one evening I walk through the English corner, and see
a bunch of Chinese mobbing an American kid: it seems
they want to make their homes in English.
But in China, English has no sovereign turf.
It’s a class, a test, a TV show,
a way of speaking, words on paper.
On paper, we behold our penciled nature.
A sketch, a life of worn erasers.
After centuries of inkwells, spectacles, typewriters,
after years of accumulated lead,
how could English be so light, folded and tucked in our corner?
Now we speak diplospeak, acronyms,
muffins, aspirin, forks and knives.
But these changes do not affect the nose, the skin:
like the toothbrush you pick up in the morning, English
glides lightly over the teeth, whitening language.
With so much ink caked in my gums, I’d better
brush every day: this requires water, a cleaning agent, and perspective.
It gives rise to theories of taste, and countless
disparities in everyday usage.
It also requires a hand, reaching into English,
two fingers apart, a letter, a triumph,
a Nazi experiment upon the self.
A cigarette falls to the ground still burning
like history, which after all
is what happens when one nation eats another’s words.
One step forward, you’ve got the Third Reich, Hitler.
I don’t know if that madman gunned down English,
massacred Shakespeare and Keats.
But I do know that English comes in two flavors:
the noble, alphabetized English of Oxford,
and the English of Churchill and Roosevelt, armed to the teeth.
Its metaphors, its science, its obliterating aesthetics
landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I watched Chinese characters become Japanese corpses—
but outside of language, our nations are allies.
I’ve read this history, and I’m suspicious.
I don’t know which is crazier, history or me.
What’s happened, this past hundred years, between Chinese and English?
Why are so many Chinese streaming into English,
trying hard as they can to blanche their own skin?
Why do they treat their language like an estranged wife,
a home in a broken mirror?
I live alone amid my stacked bricks, conversing
with paper dolls, dreaming in English, while all around me
Chinese mount the steps to English, turning
from people of pictures to people of sound.
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