你从飞机上看见它们，无名的绿色小岛
在大洋中，笔直的平原，
二三十个街区，紧凑，但又适得其所
可见的必须的一切---
高中的运动场，样本公园
沿着弯弯曲曲的河流，高速公路服务处，
主要街道像拉链，偏远的林荫路
切开土色的犁耕过的农田的蛋糕。
小号的生活，我认为--过于简易，公寓--在这样紧密的网格中。
但很像CAT扫描过的有折痕的大脑。
这些城市保留着它们的秘密：变幻莫测的精神，
地下水淹没附近的矿场，把它们变得蔚蓝，
渴望的露珠，宝石，装进这些街区的箱子中。
You see them from airplanes, nameless green islands
in the oceanic, rectilinear plains,
twenty or thirty blocks, compact, but with
everything needed visibly in place—
the high-school playing fields, the swatch of park
along the crooked river, the feeder highways,
the main drag like a zipper, outlying malls
sliced from dirt-colored cakes of plowed farmland.
Small lives, we think—pat, flat—in such tight grids.
But, much like brains with every crease CAT-scanned,
these cities keep their secrets: vagaries
of the spirit, groundwater that floods
the nearby quarries and turns them skyey blue,
dewdrops of longing, jewels, boxed in these blocks.
"Island Cities" by John Updike, from Americana: And Other Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Reprinted with permission
