Winter Poem
The quivering wings of the winter ant
wait for lean winter to end.
I love you in slow, dim-witted ways,
hardly speaking, one or two words only.
What caused us each to live hidden?
A wound, the wind, a word, a parent.
Sometimes we wait in a helpless way,
awkwardly, not whole and not healed.
When we hid the wound, we fell back
from a human to a shelled life.
Now we feel the ant’s hard chest,
the carapace, the silent tongue.
This must be the way of the ant,
the winter ant, the way of those
who are wounded and want to live:
to breathe, to sense another, and to wait.
冬日的詩
冬日飛蟻顫動的翅膀
期待著貧瘠冬季的結束。
我愛你，我的方式遲鈍而迂腐，
幾乎完全沉默，除了只言片語。
我們各自隱秘地活著，是何緣故？
一道傷、那場風、某個字、或者父母。
有時候我們癡等，無助而笨拙，
既非成竹在胸又不能坦然釋懷。
當你我掩飾起傷痕，我們便已
從人類退化成一種帶殼的生命。
此時我們感到了冬蟻堅硬的前胸，
它的甲殼，它那沉默的舌頭。
這必然就是螞蟻的方式，
冬日的螞蟻，那些受到傷害而仍想
存活下去的生物便有著這樣的方式：
呼吸、感受他人、還得等待。