压抑--C.K.威廉姆斯

最近越来越多，而且，甚至都没注意到滑脱，
         疼痛和悲伤减弱，
我陷入我的其他岁月中，我注意到曾经多少次我想过的东西
        是压抑的证据，
性或其他别的方面，现在似乎，其他人无论如何，处于
       各种各样的尊严，抑制，圆滑中，
有时候甚至于我自己本身，我曾经本来称为倦怠，
       无动于衷的某种忍性，
现在似乎可能是，如果不是奖赏，然而至少是未觉察到的，
      梦想不到的结果
对于许多甚至那时候怪诞的自我演化磨炼，严酷，
     差不多苦行
在我开始的日子，改进的日子，心灵安宁，思想孤独的日子里
       我自我惩罚，
关于理智，情感的平静，纯粹的暗示，本来意味着
        难以想象的投降条约。
More and more lately, as, not even minding the slippages yet, the aches
          and sad softenings,
I settle into my other years, I notice how many of what I once thought
          were evidences of repression,
sexual or otherwise, now seem, in other people anyway, to be varieties of
          dignity, withholding, tact,
and sometimes even in myself, certain patiences I would have once
          called lassitude, indifference,
now seem possibly to be if not the rewards then at least the unsuspected,
          undreamed-of conclusions
to many of the even-then-preposterous self-evolved disciplines, rigors,
          almost mortifications
I inflicted on myself in my starting-out days, improvement days, days
          when the idea alone of psychic peace,
of intellectual, of emotional quiet, the merest hint, would have meant
          inconceivable capitulation.
“Repression” by C.K. Williams from Collected Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006