英文诗歌朗诵

Daylight

God is proven in some way by the extreme difficulty of believing in him...

—SIMONE WEIL

July already, and the land is soon to burn, the sun at midday casting its least shadow. Across the road, the unmown pasture（草地，牧场）

will whiten

under its glare, and the world goes brittle（易碎的） with heat.

The land loves the light, and suffers from the light, and lets it go

when the day is done. The illuminated（被照明的）air has a density, and I feel

as though I should part it with my hands when I step from the shade. You don't have to look hard to see that the light is always leaving—even rising towards you, taking its lowest angle down the countryside, it is passing. The days should be getting shorter but I can't sense it

in the slow coursing of this one. It is difficult to believe

even the things you've seen; there is nothing that I know

for certain. A mockingbird（模仿鸟，知更鸟） lands on a post and has

more to say

about what will bear us skyward than I do. The day is without

music—

or any that is organized in a way I can hear. It is easy to forget

the words you've read in books and all you've been told is true

with the world this bright and close at hand. I am learning to look

with a new kind of wanting. There are a few minutes as the day dims when the details in the distant line of trees become clarified,

the tree forms taking on greater depth, their lobed（分裂的，有叶的）leaves individuated

as the light releases them, the rich texturing of each tree

suddenly present, rendered with a painstaking（艰苦的，勤勉的）draftsmanship（制图术） ,

then they blacken and solidify, emptied of every last particular,

a jagged line backed by a sky which will stay brilliant for some time

to come, as though the light that once lay in the weeds now waits

in the air above, wondering, I suppose, why it is we do not follow.

Lemon

Danielle Cadena Deulen

They loved each other, but a lemon tree

grew between them—no solace（安慰，慰藉） in the way

it leaned, as if to whisper from her yard

into his, across the coyote（北美小狼） fence,

a promise of something greater. The fruit

was a luminous（发光的，明亮的） yellow, triumphant（成功的）in the branches—at night, he'd stare

at the tree's dim body, almost

indistinguishable from the darkness,

and imagine climbing into the V

of its trunk, swallowing the lemons whole,

his belly full of light. She'd quiver（颤抖） in

her bed, dream of her arms turning to wood,

snakes like ribbon over her radiant（光点）

throat, lemons ripe in her hair. They remained

hidden from one another, but gathered

the fallen fruit, rolled them on their bedroom

floors, severed them into halves—radial

as open compasses—ate the brassy

bitterness of their skins. Isn't this how

it would taste: a sour citrus sprinkled

with sugar, salt, the bitter aftertaste（回味）of rind?

Or do you place an apple in her hand,

a past sweetness in each crisp bite?

In Every Life

Alicia Ostriker

In every life there’s a moment or two

when the self disappears, the cruel wound takes over, and then again

at times we are filled with sky

or with birds or

simply with the sugary tea on the table

said the old woman

I know what you mean said the tulip（郁金香）about epiphanies（主显节）

for instance a cloudless April sky

the approach of a butterfly

but as to the disappearing self

no

I have not yet experienced that

You are creating distinctions（区别，荣誉）

that do not exist in reality

where "self" and "not-self" are like salt

in ocean, cloud in sky

oxygen in fire

said the philosophical（哲学的，冷静的） dog under the table scratching his balls