Poppies in July
当我无意中遇到这首小诗时，我立即莫名喜欢。我想我被震撼到了，我必须把它分享出去，介绍给我的读者们！似乎从没有一首诗，把痛苦写得如此深刻又如此画面感十足地唯美！
本诗的作者是Sylvia Plath/西尔维亚•普拉斯，一位堪比艾米莉•狄金森的美国女诗人。
我们一起来欣赏：
Poppies in July
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep!------
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
20 July 1962
七月罂粟
小小罂粟 小小地狱之火
你伤不伤人?
你摇曳闪动 我却够不到
投双手入火也不燃烧
看着你我就沮丧
如此摇曳闪动
多褶而鲜红如嘴唇
你受过伤的嘴唇
沾满血的小裙子!
有些烟我碰不到
你的麻药呢你令人作呕的药瓯呢
但愿我能流血或入睡
但愿我的嘴唇能嫁给那样的创伤!
或者你的汁液渗向我
在玻璃瓶中
让我迟缓宁静
———只是无色苍白
诗歌精彩赏析：
source
"Poppies in July" appeared in Sylvia Plath's important posthumous collection Ariel (1965). In this short, nightmarish poem, a speaker gazes at a field of poppies and sees her own pain reflected back at her. The blood-red poppies—to a different viewer, a beautiful sight—only make her think of violence and "hell flames." Longing to escape from her suffering, she dreams of the "colorless" dullness she imagines the poppies' concealed "opiates" (soporific drugs) might offer her, if only she could get at them.
"七月罂粟”出自西尔维亚•普拉斯死后出版的诗集《爱丽尔》。在这首简短梦魇般的诗里，主人公盯着一片罂粟花田，感觉到她自身的痛苦映射到花儿身上。这血红的罂粟花--对他人而言，是一番如此美好的景象--却使她联想到暴力和“地狱之火”。她渴望逃避她的痛苦，她梦想能够进入一种鸦片烟---从罂粟花中提取出来--带来的麻木状态，如果她能获得鸦片的话。
“Poppies in July” Summary
“七月罂粟”诗歌总结
The speaker gazes at a field of poppies and speaks to them, calling them hell flames and asking them if they really don't do any harm.
作者凝视着一片罂粟花，对它们低语，喊它们“地狱之火”，并问它们是否真的不会给人带来伤害。
Though the flowers flicker like fire, the speaker can't touch them; when she puts her hand among the flowers, they don't burn her.
尽管花儿摇曳似流火，作者却触碰不到它们。而当她把手放到花儿中时，花儿也并没有像火一样灼烧着她。
Watching them tires the speaker out. Their crinkly red petals make her think of lips.
看到花儿使作者虚弱。它们的猩红花瓣使她想起人的嘴唇。
They make her think of bloody lips—or perhaps bloodstained skirts!
它们使她联想到血淋淋的红唇，
或者是沾满鲜血的裙子！
She knows that inside the poppies lie chemicals that she can't reach: numbing opiates, nauseating pills.
她知道罂粟花里的化学物质，她根本得不到：那种令人麻木的鸦片。
If only, she thinks, she could bleed like the poppies seem to, or sleep like the poppy's opiates could help her to; if only she could fully feel or express the pain that the poppies reflect at her.
她想，如果她能像血红的罂粟一样流血，或者像吸食了罂粟里鸦片后那样沉睡就好了；如果她能充分表达出罂粟花投射给她的那种痛就好了。
She wishes that the poppies' opiates could reach her, calming her and slowing her down—even though those drugs would also take away all the world's colors.
她渴望罂粟花里的鸦片能安抚她，使她麻木，即使这些药物也带走了世界的缤纷色彩。
主人公精神上的痛无处宣泄，终于找到了罂粟花这个绝妙的具象化出口。与其承受这种看不见说不明的精神上的剧痛和折磨，不如让身体痛痛快快鲜血喷涌而出似罂粟花海，或者进入一种鸦片所带来沉睡麻木的无知状态。
亲爱的朋友们，你有过“万箭穿心”的痛苦体验吗？如果有，你一定会懂得这首诗并产生强烈的共鸣！！！无论哪一个国度哪一种语言，人类的情感是共通的！