给戴安

——用自己的双手结束了自己的生命

by 霍华德 （黛安·阿勃斯的哥哥）

亲爱的，我不知道死前

你是否想玩孩子们的游戏

——相信你也玩过了

游戏里，你沿着一道窄窄的花墙跑过

你把墙看作山脊

山脊两翼沉浸在雪落的天幕中

深不可测

你意识到了平衡

你惧怕掉下去

你跳了起来

一个瞬间划过脑海：

我要死了

这是往昔的时光

而现在你去了

没人再玩长大的游戏

游戏里，黑暗笼罩着失衡的山脊

你仍在跑，没有往下看

也没有再跳起来

因为

你惧怕掉下去

附原文：

To D-, Dead by Her Own Hand

by Howard Nemerov

My dear, I wonder if before the end

You ever thought about a children’s game—

I’m sure you must have played it too—in which

You ran along a narrow garden wall

Pretending it to be a mountain ledge

So steep a snowy darkness fell away

On either side to deeps invisible;

And when you felt your balance being lost

You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought

For only an instant: That was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you’ve gone,

Who would no longer play the grown-ups’game

Where, balanced on the ledge above the dark,

You go on running and you don’t look down,

Nor ever jump because you fear to fall.