What can I hold you with?

我用什么才能留住你

I offer you lean streets,

我给你瘦落的街道，

desperate sunsets,

绝望的落日，

the moon of the jagged suburbs.

荒郊的月亮，

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men,

我给你我已死去的祖辈，

the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:

后人们用大理石祭奠的先魂，

my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires,

我父亲的父亲阵亡于布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境，

two bullets through his lungs,

两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，

bearded and dead,

死的时候蓄着胡子，

wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;

尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起。

my mother’s grandfather

我母亲的祖父，

just twenty-four

那年才二十四岁，

heading a charge of three hundred men in Peru,

在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋，

now ghosts on vanished horses.

如今都成了消失的马背上的亡魂。

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold.

我给你我的书中所能蕴含的一切悟力，

whatever manliness or humour my life.

以及我生活中所能有的男子气概和幽默，

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart

我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心，

that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams

不营字造句，不和梦交易，

and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

我给你早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。

I offer you explanationsof yourself,

我给你关于你生命的诠释，

theories about yourself,

关于你自己的理论，

authentic and surprising news of yourself.

你的真实而惊人的存在。

I can give you my loneliness,

我给你我的寂寞，

my darkness,

我的黑暗，

the hunger of my heart;

我心的饥渴，

I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。

【本文作者】博尔赫斯