What can I hold you with ?
我 用 什 么 才 能 留 住 你 ？

〔阿根廷〕博尔赫斯

我给你，贫穷的街道，绝望的日落，破败郊区的月亮。

我给你，一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。

我给你，我已死去的先辈，人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵：在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，蓄着胡子的他死去了，士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体：我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。

我给你，我写的书中所能包含的一切悟力、我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。

我给你，一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。

我给你，我设法保全的我自己的核心——不营字造句，不和梦想交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。

我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。

我给你，你对自己的解释，关于你自己的理论，你自己的真实而惊人的消息。

我给你，我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。

What can I hold you with ?

I offer you lean streets,desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness ofa man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

I offer you my ancestors, mydead men, the ghost that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s fatherkilled in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, beardedand dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’sgrandfather—just twentyfour—heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, nowghosts on vanished horses.

I offer you whatever insightmy books may hold, whatever manliness humour my life.

I offer you the loyalty of aman who has never been loyal.

I offer her that kernel ofmyself that I have saved, somehow –the central heart that deals not in words,traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

I offer you the memory of ayellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

I offer you explanations ofyourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.

I can give you my loneliness,my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty,with danger, with defeat.