給戴安

——用自己的雙手結束了自己的生命

by 霍華德 （黛安·阿勃斯的哥哥）

親愛的，我不知道死前

你是否想玩孩子們的游戲

——相信你也玩過了

游戲里，你沿著一道窄窄的花墻跑過

你把墻看作山脊

山脊兩翼沉浸在雪落的天幕中

深不可測

你意識到了平衡

你懼怕掉下去

你跳了起來

一個瞬間劃過腦海：

我要死了

這是往昔的時光

而現在你去了

沒人再玩長大的游戲

游戲里，黑暗籠罩著失衡的山脊

你仍在跑，沒有往下看

也沒有再跳起來

因為

你懼怕掉下去

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.