双语·有声 | 沿途的景，旅人的诗 "

Eric Jaffe/ Norman Xin译

There’s a well-known poetry

installation (艺术展览)

in the New York city subway system called “A Commuter’s Lament, or a

Close Shave (幸免于难)

,” written by the late

Norman Colp (美国当代艺术家)

. The poem reveals itself on a series of ceiling beams in the high-traffic tunnel connecting the Port Authority (纽约港务局)
and times square subway stops. Depending on your outlook in life the poem is either a bleak “ode to futility and resignation,” as the New York Times City Room blog has called it, or an honest reflection of the tireless and tiresome daily commute:

But then the poem got an unexpected line edit from a college student in the Bronx with a more

upbeat (欢快的)

perspective on things. “Overslept” became “Overexcited.” “Why the pain” became “Much to gain.” and so on. The culprit just wanted to make the city “a little bit of a happier place,” according to the Daily News. But Colp’s widow wasn’t too happy about the stunt—“why be optimistic?” She told the News—and neither was the city’s transit authority, which quickly restored the original wording.

The incident got us thinking about transit poetry in general. There’s actually quite a lot of it: carved into station walls, lining the ad panels of train cars, graffitied onto bus stand walls, and so on. In no particular order, and with a slight preference for works with a transportation theme, here are some of our favorite transit poems from around the globe.

在纽约的地铁系统中，有一个广为人知的诗歌“展品”，诗的名字叫《一个通勤者的哀叹，或者死里逃生》，作者是已故的诺曼·科尔普。这首诗被展示在连接港务局站和时报广场站的快速交通隧道的平顶梁上。怎么理解这首诗取决于你的人生观：既可以像《纽约时报》城市房间博客所称呼的那样将之理解为一首凄凉的“徒劳与无奈的颂歌”，也可以将之看成是对永不停息而又索然乏味的日常通勤的忠实写照：

睡过了头，/如此疲惫。/如果迟到，/就被辞退。/何苦费力？/何必痛苦？/不妨回家，/从头再来。

但后来，这首诗出人意料地被逐行篡改了。改诗的人是一位来自布朗克斯的大学生，他看待事物的视角无疑更为乐观。“睡过了头”被改成了“热血沸腾”，“何必痛苦”改成了“收益良多”，如此等等。根据《每日新闻报》的报道，这位篡改者只不过是想给这个城市“稍稍增加点乐趣”。但科尔普的遗孀对这种噱头很是不满。“为什么非要乐观不可呢？”她对《每日新闻报》说。纽约市交通管理部门对此也不满意，他们很快就恢复了原来的诗句。

这件事促使我们对写于公交场所的诗歌进行一番整体性思考。公交场所的诗歌其实很多，有的刻在石头墙上，有的衬在火车车厢广告牌里，还有的涂写在公共汽车站的墙壁上，不一而足。下面是我们从世界各地摘取的一些我们最喜爱的公交场所诗歌，排序不分先后，但稍稍倾向于那些关于交通主题的作品。

“To you” by Walt Whitman

Poetry in Motion (“移动的诗歌”项目，主要负责发展公共交通系统内的诗歌展示)

graced cars of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for 18 years, from 1992 to 2008, before giving way to a related program, train of thought, which itself gave way to M.T.A. house ads in late 2010. In march, 2011, there was talk of reviving poetry in motion—M.T.A. chief Jay Walder reportedly loves himself a good verse—but with Walder out now the program’s future is uncertain. still New York city subway cars have housed a great many poems in the past, including these fitting lines from Whitman’s “Inscriptions,” in the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass, via poetry in Motion:

STRANGER! If you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me,

why should you not speak to me?

And why should i not speak to you?

《给你》，沃尔特·惠特曼

从1992年到2008年的18年来，“移动的诗歌”一直在为大都会运输署的车辆增光添彩，直至被另一个相关项目“思绪的火车”所代替，而“思绪的火车”项目又于2010年下半年被大都会运输署自身的广告所取代。2011年3月，有人提及要恢复“移动的诗歌”。据说，大都会运输署署长杰伊·华尔德本人就喜欢优美的诗歌。但如今华尔德已不在任了，这个项目的前途如何就不得而知了。然而，纽约市地铁车厢内仍保留着过去留下的大量诗歌，其中包括通过“移动的诗歌”项目展示的惠特曼的诗。下面这几行文字就选自惠特曼1891年版《草叶集》中的《铭文》这一章节，内容十分切合交通场景：

陌生人！如果你在经过时遇到我，

想要和我交谈，

为什么你就不能和我交谈呢？

为什么我又不能和你交谈呢？

“Taxi” by Elise Paschen

The Chicago section of Poetry in Motion ran a 1996 poem by Elise Paschen, from her work Infidelities, about the joys of sitting in a traffic jam in the Loop with a

love interest (心仪之人)

. (Perhaps a subconscious reminder from the Chicago Transit Authority that sometimes public transportation is more efficient?) the work concludes:

I’m not immune

to your

deft (灵巧的)

charm

in one stalled car

I’d like to take

you as you are

《出租车》，埃莉泽·帕申

“移动的诗歌”芝加哥部分采用了一首埃莉泽·帕申于1996年写的诗，选自她的作品《不忠》，写的是在芝加哥鲁普区乘坐出租车遭遇堵塞时，和心仪之人坐在车里一起等待的乐趣。(莫非芝加哥交通局是在暗示人们公共运输有时效率更高？)诗的结尾是这样的：

在熄火的汽车里

对你灵动的魅力

我毫无抵抗力

我甘愿接受

你的一切

“Window” by Carl Sandburg

One more work

courtesy of (由……提供)

poetry in Motion, this time one that appeared on Philadelphia’s SEPTA system. it’s from a Carl Sandburg compilation called Chicago poems, oddly enough, but evokes a joy of train travel that’s universal:

Night from a railroad car window

is a great, dark, soft thing

broken across with slashes of light

《窗户》，卡尔·桑德伯格

这又是“移动的诗歌”项目的一个杰作，这次是出现在费城的东南宾夕法尼亚州运输署系统中的诗歌。这首诗摘自卡尔·桑德伯格编撰的《芝加哥诗集》。该诗听起来非常怪异，但却能唤起人们在乘火车旅行时所普遍感受到的乐趣：

火车窗外的夜

是一个庞然大物，黑暗，柔软

一把把光的利剑将其砍断

“Out the window”

series by Marisela Norte

Via Streetsblog L.A. we learn about a brand new effort to flash poetry on the television boxes along certain bus routes in Los Angeles. The poems were written by regular rider Marisela Norte, and they appear on video screens at five intersections; the one below can be found at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax.

blue pencils

pomegranates (石榴)

where did your dreams take you last night

《窗外》系列，玛丽塞拉·诺特

通过博客“洛杉矶街道”，我们了解到一个崭新的尝试，即在洛杉矶某些公交线路沿途的电视屏幕上展示诗歌。诗的作者是经常乘坐公交车的玛丽塞拉·诺特，诗歌在五个交叉路口旁的电视大屏幕上投放。下面这首诗出现在威尔希尔大街和费尔法克斯大街的交叉口：

蓝色铅笔

石榴

昨晚你们在梦中去了哪里

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

In July, 2011, the blog

muni (市政的)

Diaries, which writes about travel along the “sometimes

crappy (糟糕的)

, sometimes efficient” transit system in San Francisco, posted a photo of a few lines from a Robert Frost

gem (珍品)

scrawled onto the inside wall of a city bus stand. The anonymous scribbler doesn’t appear to have

attributed (认为……属于)

the lines, and even messed up the first word (writing “And” for “But”), but as far as bus riders are concerned his or her heart was in the “write” place (see what we did there). Here is the poem’s final stanza in its entirety:

the woods are lovely, dark and deep,

but I have promises to keep,

and miles to go before I sleep,

and miles to go before I sleep.

《雪夜林边小驻》，罗伯特·弗罗斯特

博客“市政日记”主要撰写关于乘坐旧金山市公交系统的旅途感想，称其“有时很糟糕，有时效率很高”。2011年7月，该博客发布了一张照片，照片上是从罗伯特·弗罗斯特的一首杰作中摘取的几行诗，不知被谁涂鸦在一个公交站内的墙上。这位不知名的涂鸦者似乎没有注明这首诗的作者，甚至连第一个词都搞错了(将And写成了But)。但是就乘车者而言，这位涂鸦者是用心在写的，感情是无“写”可击的(你瞧我这词用的)。(译注：作者这里在玩文字游戏，原本是in the right place，却写成in the write place。)下面是这首诗完整的最后一节：

树林可爱、幽暗而又深邃，

但我还有承诺要去兑现，

在睡觉之前我还要走很远很远，

在睡觉之前我还要走很远很远

“The Wound Dresser” by Walt Whitman

A few years back the Washington Metro began to carve poems into the stone walls of certain stops with the theme of caring for others. Part of this Whitman poem from Leaves of Grass was written into the north entrance of the Dupont Circle station. the selection omits the final two lines of verse:

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,

Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;

The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,

I sit by the restless all dark night—some are so young;

Some suffer so much—I recall the experience sweet and sad ...

《伤口包扎者》，沃尔特·惠特曼

几年前，华盛顿地铁公司开始在某些车站的石头墙上雕刻诗歌，主题是关爱他人。杜邦环岛站北入口处就刻了惠特曼《草叶集》里的一首诗，只刻了诗的一部分。摘选部分省略了诗歌的最后两行：

就这样，在沉默中，在梦幻般的现实中，

我回来了，又干起了老本行，穿梭在一家家医院里；

用抚慰的手去安慰伤者的伤痛，

在漆黑的夜晚我通宵坐在烦躁的伤者旁——他们有些人是那么年轻；

有些人是那么痛苦 ——我记起这段甜蜜又忧伤的经历……

“J’ai Dit Parfois” by Pierre Tilman

A passenger on the Paris Metro snapped a shot of this Tilman poem somewhere between Abbesses and Chateau de Vincennes, calling it “a very welcome diversion from all the H&M Jimmy Choo adverts.” She even bothered to provide a rough translation of the poem; it begins,

provocatively (煽情地)

I said sometimes

I said yes

I said no ...

Which, as it happens, could serve as the default responses to the following transit questions: Does the train arrive on time? Would you prefer that it did? Do you expect that it will?

《我说有时候》，皮埃尔·特尔曼

巴黎地铁的一位乘客在阿贝斯站和文森城堡站之间的某个地方抓拍到了这首特尔曼的诗歌，称其“挺解闷的，尤其是能让人从铺天盖地的H&M以及周仰杰鞋业广告中解脱出来”。她甚至还不嫌麻烦地提供了一个大致的译文。这首诗的开头就很煽情：

我说有时候

我说是的

我说不……

这首诗正好可以用作对如下交通问题的默认回答：地铁能准时到达吗？你希望它准时到达吗？你觉得它能准时到达吗？

Ernest Bryll

The Wiersze w Metrze program began in 2008 with a general focus on modern European poetry, but in 2011 it narrowed the lens to contemporary Polish poets. This work by the

decorated (给……授勋)

poet Ernest Bryll was translated into English by Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese. It begins:

Why do we wake up every morning so exhausted

As if each night we did not sleep a wink,

How come our faces so grey, and our eyes so old,

Why are we always in such a rush

Norman Colp would no doubt approve.

欧内斯特·布里尔

“地铁上的诗歌”项目始于2008年，一般以展示现代欧洲诗歌为主，但在2011年将范围缩小，仅限于当代波兰诗人。下面这首诗是授勋诗人欧内斯特·布里尔的作品，由埃尔贝塔·沃杰希克-里斯译成英文。诗的开头是这样的：

为什么每天早晨醒来我们如此疲惫

仿佛每个夜晚都没有合眼，

为什么我们的面孔如此灰暗，眼睛如此苍老，

为什么我们总是如此匆匆

对诗中所说，诺曼·科尔普无疑会表示赞同。