萦魂之手 | 路易丝·杜普蕾

1

你的愁困与忧郁无关，也和这首诗因怒咆哮时杂乱失序无关，也和那些丧失信仰者的失望无关。它是一种语法失灵的语言，符号开始漫游，从一个词组迁徙到另一个，你里面有什么绽放，惊异哆口，发出驴鸣犹如身在复活节祭坛，你是你全部献祭的羔羊与尖刀，是赎罪和复仇之手，你是一分为二的名字，是你可能看到自己最终面貌被擦去时的那种直觉。但幸好还有几个隐喻为你而留，保护你不受无法弥补的词语所伤。你仍然还有一个房间可以蜷缩，低声背诵光的教诲。

2

你对体内的炼狱罪罚毫无对策。你不动，希望静默从你耳中空洞扫过，赦免从一种静默而来，这静默和你身体共生共灭，与你同呼同吸，战争平息，白色旗帜，是时候要重拾勇气，昂首迈向艰难险阻，要记住你名字里的元音。你想写下“是”，好像玛丽，好像莫莉，好像在你之前所有对爱响应的人，即使丧失恩典你还想写下“是”，你只需等待那只即将递给你的手，神经和肌肉，手指的舞蹈，不要惧怕，不要羞愧，在夜晚火光来临前一直装死，直到你把自己的伤痛活活烧灼。你便会学会畅饮众城鲜血。

3

怎样看待一首诗，当它把你上下打量，试着把你置入虚空？你紧握着黎明枯寂静默，你想相信自己的手仍有一抹亮色，只够拯救离你而去的最后一个词语。你说出“心”的方式犹如别人说出“神”或“真理”，这是你唯一的狂热，当理性再无法理性思考，心，心在跳动当婴孩入眠于母亲臂弯，猫在街角被寻获，一个古老的声音突然将你惊醒命你起身行走，每次你遵命而行，你起身把一只脚放在另一只前，似乎你从未忘记如何行走。你关上窗，离开这世界。你接受自己的背叛。

4

当地面在你脚下张开大口，你何去何从？你看见过如此多的首级被斩，如此多的开膛取脏，你已超越羞耻之境。你再也无法在死者面前下跪，你把自己裹在灰烬织成的头巾里，向那些高呼自己仍生存的人们伸出双臂。你所称的“爱”不过是你片刻逃离去为你邻人的脚拔走尖刺。你离开仿佛你要离开长居其中的绝望，你去国离乡然后又回归自我，手指弄脏，流血疼痛和尿液流淌。在临终前被迫放弃你作为一个女死者的形象，只为了建立一个绝不似你的样子。然后你便会构想一种诗歌，清洗翻新，有如武器。

5

你已不记得何时这首诗对你倒戈，像一张伴眠已久的被子那样把你摇晃出去，逼迫你无法再撒谎。你开始为自己的耳朵吟唱未见的微风，风被童年层层包裹。它们以一日破晓之耐心守候着你，它们守候着你，陈旧的肉体仍与骨头相连，仿佛信念一下子跳出泥潭。路边音乐，光之乐章在叶间婆娑，是所有声讨地球音乐中的绿色音乐。你眼前看到美的阴影。你意识到自己对幸福有所亏欠，你也意识到自己对痛苦有所亏欠。

6

现在应该把你指间的丝线一一剪断，把流浪猫引进你的花园，在你奔赴黄泉之前收集花圈。你还是人类，你仍会爱你所恨，相信不再信的，仁慈的午夜幽灵和祈祷，即使像被强暴者衣裙那样被玷污。孤独在手，“孤独终碎”。¹你还没用掉自己的九条命，你疲惫双眼中也无群星诞生，更无简单词句的未来。你会找到勇气躺下如落向燃烧脏布的裸雪，面对暴力狂怒的纯粹耐心，抗争成长，反驳教养，在希望和恐惧中变得惨白。你将掌控羞耻之地。

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手被魂灵萦绕，你变成一个对女性太过沉重的故事，野蛮程度令人发指。你认识每个时代的捕猎者，每个时代都追踪你的一言一行。你是一个指甲发黑任其如此的诗人。你不再身处选美比赛的时代，不再身处崇拜面孔写下诗行的时代，你的镜子现在复制你母亲的皱纹。年华老去让你无法安宁，失去智慧，只有沙漠孤寂索居才能让你的话语失效，对于那些被剑锋砍倒犹如古老建筑的人质而言。而你对诗歌的梦想也会惊醒众神的温柔，即使你必须叫他们为“祷告者或祈神者”。你是你自己的矛盾体。

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因为你的子宫享受，你的子宫吶喊，阴性欲望，汗水流淌，圣餐和毒害之酒。你再次承认自己的干渴，你把寿衣晃动成桌布，你不让任何人再耻笑光的诱惑。就在此刻，作为无名之辈的耻辱，就在各地，同样的泪水，同样的手臂，但爱要胜过恐惧。你仍有勇气再次确立自己的名字，每天早上你确立它就像例行公事，就像你母亲让你每晚放学背诵动词变位练习。有一天你停止书写“我”，你忘记为何。你的记忆从他们的图景中消失。

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像一个酗酒者的承诺，生活的游击战日复一日，浩瀚森林，灵魂坚垒围困。你的肉体下跪，你侦察自己最微小的弱点，你不让自己拥有这个区域。长久以往，你在烈日之下思考黑暗，观看黑暗，诉说黑暗。人性无法治疗，你早就知道。在孤独中你是自己的兵团，这并非安慰，不过只是证观，你还没数完身边的空椅，你从眼角对它们进行评估，咒骂着说自己不会就座。你想站立居住，站立于生者之间。你想学会说“我们”就像发出召唤寻找目击证人。

1 安妮·艾伯特的诗句。

The Haunted Hand

1

Your distress has nothing to do with melancholy, nor with the disarray of the poem when it cries with rage, nor with the despair of those who have lost their faith. It is a language with a grammar gone wrong, and the signs begin to wander, to migrate from one phrase to another, something opens inside you, it yawns wide, it brays as on an Easter altar, you are the lamb and the knife of all sacrifices, the expiation and the avenging hand, you are a name split in two, the thought that you might see your last face erased. But there remain to you, luckily, a few metaphors, they shield you from unforgiveable words. You still have a room where you curl up, reciting under your breath the lesson of light.

2

You have no sway over the damnation that dwells within you. You do not move, you would like the silence to spread through the hollow of your ear, the absolution from a silence that would be one with your body, breath with your breath, a war becalmed, a white flag, time enough to take courage, to move on head high into hardship, to remember the vowels in your given name. You want to write yes, like Marie, like Molly, like all those who before you answered to love, even deprived of grace you want to write yes, it’s enough to wait for your hand to be handed back, nerves and muscles, fingers that dance, do not be afraid, do not be ashamed, play dead until there is fire in the night, until you sear your suffering alive. You will learn then to drink the blood of cities.

3

How to regard a poem when it looks you up and down, tries to launch you into the void? You hold to dawn’s gaunt silence, you want to believe that your hand can still contain a bit of brightness, just enough to rescue the last word left you. You utter heart the way others say God or truth, it’s your only ardour when reason can reason no more, heart, heart beating where a baby sleeps in the arms of its mother, a cat found on a street corner, an ancient voice that suddenly awakens and orders you to rise and walk. And every time you obey, you rise and put one foot in front of another, as if you had never forgotten how to walk. You close the window, leave the world. You accept your treason.

4

Where to go when the ground’s maw yawns wide beneath your feet? You have seen so many beheadings, so many disembowelled, that you have moved beyond the threshold of shame. You can no longer kneel on your knees before the dead, you wrap yourself in a shawl woven from ashes and you hold out your arms to those crying that they are alive. What you call love is your escaping yourself a moment to go and pull thorns from the feet of your neighbour. You depart as you would exit a despair too long your home, to go into exile and then return to yourself, fingers dirtied, bloodied, oozing pain and urine, forgoing your image of a woman dead before dying to assume a likeness unlike what was yours. You would then conjure a poetry polished to gleam like a weapon.

5

You do not remember when the poem turned against you, shook you out like a quilt too used to sleep, forced you to no longer lie. You began to chant unseen melodies for your ear, wrapped in the folds of childhood. They awaited you with the patience of a day ready to dawn, they awaited you, old flesh still bound to bone like faith sprung straight from mire. Music of the street, music of light quivering in the leaves, green music of all the musics that once overhung the earth’s complaint. You saw profiled before your eyes beauty’s shadow. You who conceded only your debt to pain, you have all at once conceded your debt to joy.

6

It is time to snip the threads between your fingers, to lure stray cats into your garden, to gather up flowers before you are six feet under, to take time enough to bestow grace on dread. You are still human, you still love what you hate, you believe in what you no longer believe, the kindly phantoms of midnight and prayer, even if sullied like a garment that’s a familiar of rape. Solitude shouldered, solitude shattered.¹ You have not exhausted your nine lives, nor the stars born in your tired eyes, nor the future of simple words. You will find the nerve to lay yourself down like naked snow upon rags in flames, sheer patience countering force and rage, raised up against, upthrust against, white with hope and fear. You will assume control of the field of shame.

7

Your hand haunted, you become a story too charged for a woman, one of hair-trigger barbarity. You’ve known predators of all eras and every era stalks each of your acts. You are a poet of blackened nails and you will remain so. You are no longer of an age for beauty pageants, no longer of an age for verses ringed round in adoration of faces, your mirror replicates now your mother’s wrinkles. Aging brings you no peace, no wisdom, only the desolation of a desert where your words can do nothing for hostages cut down by sword blades, like ancient monuments. And yet you dream of poems that will awaken the tenderness of gods, even if you must call them prayers or orisons. You are your own contradiction.

8

Because your womb enjoins, your womb calls out, desire’s tide, perspiration, wine of communion and intoxication. Once more you acknowledge your thirst, you shake shrouds out into table linen, you let no one scorn any longer the allure of light. Here is now, the mortification of being no one, here is everywhere, the same tears, the same arms, but love larger than fear. You dare once more to you’re your given name, each morning you raise it up, a duteous task, an exercise kin to the conjugations your mother had you repeat every night after school. One day you stopped writing I, you forget why. Your memories had failed in their picturing.

9

Like an alcoholic’s pledge, day after day the guerrilla war of living, teeming forests, the soul’s strongholds to besiege. Hunkered down in your flesh, you spy out your smallest weaknesses, you permit yourself no quarter. For so long you’ve thought dark, seen dark, spoken dark in the blazing sun. Human nature is incurable, you’ve known that for a long time, you are legion in your solitude, this is no consolation, an observation at best. You have not done counting the empty chairs around you and you appraise them out of the corner of your eye, swearing you will not sit yourself there. It is upright that you want to inhabit yourself, upright among the living. You want to learn to say us as if you were summoning witnesses.

1 From a poem by Anne Hébert.

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