The Harbour in January

By Caitriona O’Reilly

Maybe this landscape never frowned

and spoiled its early blue face.

Above, like an arched eyebrow,

a single crow makes broken circles.

Birds in the hedge confer in boiling voices.1. hedge: 樹(shù)籬；confer: 商談。

It takes a large design to displace

mercury-heavy2. mercury-heavy: 重金屬汞。rolls like these—

water relaxing its folds of fabric3. fabric: 布，織物。.

It sees us bend from cockpit or quayside4. cockpit: 駕駛員座艙；quayside: 碼頭邊。

and gives us shivering bodies, splintered5. splintered: 裂成碎片的。

faces and hands. We aren’t ourselves in it.

Like a glamorous6. glamorous: 充滿冒險(xiǎn)性的。uncrossed desert,

the sea’s of mobile feature. Any ship’s legacy

is a smile that widens and complicates

and gapes7. gape: 敞開(kāi)。to take in all the bay and me—

not of the sea, not in it, just looking on

at how the purple undertow8. undertow: （海浪涌上海灘破碎后形成的）回卷，退浪。reveals itself

in surfacing, in lapsing platinum9. platinum: 銀灰色。.

也許這風(fēng)景從不蹙眉

并且破壞它從前藍(lán)色的面龐。

天空中，如拱起的眉毛，

一只烏鴉在斷斷續(xù)續(xù)地盤繞。

鳥兒們?cè)跇?shù)籬中熱烈討論。

制定計(jì)劃，打算遷徙

充斥著重金屬汞的海浪翻滾著——

浪花在層層波浪的皺褶中緩和下來(lái)。

看著我們從舵艙或碼頭轉(zhuǎn)彎

映射著我們顫抖的身體，碎片般的

手和臉。在海水中我們已經(jīng)不是自我。

就像充滿冒險(xiǎn)性的未穿越的沙漠，

大海具有流動(dòng)性。任何船只的殘骸

微笑著，歡快地，復(fù)雜地

打著哈欠，收容海灣的一切和我——

不包括大海，和大海中的一切，只是注視著

紫色的退浪留下什么，

在海浪的表面，沉下一層銀灰色。