ITCH
癢
(The Flea’s Retort)
（跳蚤的回嘴）
◎Alan Jenkins （亞倫簡金斯）／沈政男 翻譯

It must have been their first time—first shared bed,
A hotel off 42nd Street, so sleazy
It had seen stuff that made cockroaches queasy
And even the rats had learned to give head.
But these two were so young, so innocent,
They thought the footsteps that came and went
All night in the corridor, with whispers, meant
Someone was sick, or dead; and so they hid
Their guilty fears by doing what they did,
Three times, then fell asleep. That’s when I fed.

這必定是他們的第一次—第一次同床
一家在四十二街外頭的旅社，陽春到
曾經見過那些讓蟑螂噁心的穢物
而老鼠們甚至已學會了給頭。
然而這兩人是這麼年輕，這麼天真，
他們以為腳步聲來了又去
整夜在長廊裡，夾帶耳語，代表
有人病了，或死了；而因此他們隱藏
他們帶著罪惡感的恐懼，藉由做他們所做之事，
三次，然後睡著。那是我進食的時候。

Not the kind of place you lie around
And wait for room service in the morning,
Rich on coffee smells. As day was dawning
They scratched their itch again; untangled, found
They were soon scratching at a different one
And this time the scratching was no fun—
In the struggle for survival, I had won
A little victory . . . Inflamed in parts
They’d barely known, with murder in their hearts
They hunted me; but I had gone to ground.

不是那種處所，你到處臥躺
並等待房間服務在早晨，
滿室是咖啡香氣。當一日破曉
他們再次搔抓他們的癢處；放開，發現
他們很快搔抓著不同的地方
而這次的搔抓並不好玩—
在生存競爭裡，我已經贏得
一個小小勝利…紅腫在一些
他們幾乎不知的部位，內心想要殺人
他們獵捕我；但我已經逃到坑洞去。

If words could kill me, I would not be here
To tell the tale—they raged, they spat blood libels
On my kind, they hurled their Gideon’s Bibles
At specks their maddened vision made appear
On sheets and tiles in that unhappy room.
Did they think it might have been their tomb?—
In a time of plague, the telltale bloom
Of red pinpricks, two bloodstreams joined as one,
Two lifelines cut off in a storm of fear
Before their years of bed-hopping had begun!

如果話語可以殺死我，我就不會在這裡
訴說這則故事—他們暴怒，他們含血噴人
汙衊我的族類，他們丟擲旅社版本聖經
往他們瘋狂視野所顯影的小點子砸去
在被單與瓷磚之上，在那不快樂的房間裡。
他們可曾想過這可能是他們的墳墓？—
在瘟疫的年代，這紅色針扎的
昭示之花，兩股血脈合而為一，
兩條生命線被切斷在恐懼的風暴當中
在他們的跳床歲月開始以前！

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《紐約客》當期詩作，作者是六十一歲的英國詩人亞倫簡金斯。

給頭：口交。跳床：雜交。