【每日一诗词】美术馆（奥登）

陶北

Musée des Beaux Arts
by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

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　　关于苦难他们总是很清楚的，
　　这些古典画家：他们多么深知它在
　　人心中的地位，甚至痛苦会产生，
　　当别人在吃，在开窗，或正作着无聊的散步的时候 ；
　　甚至当老年人热烈地、虔敬地等候
　　神异的降生时，总会有些孩子
　　并不特别想要他出现，而却在
　　树林边沿的池塘上溜着冰。
　　他们从不忘记：
　　即使悲惨的殉道也终归会完结
　　在一个角落，乱糟糟的地方，
　　在那里狗继续过着狗的生涯，而迫害者的马
　　把无知的臀部在树上摩擦。

　　在勃鲁盖尔的《伊卡鲁斯》里，比如说；
　　一切是多么安闲地从那桩灾难转过脸：
　　农夫或许听到了堕水的声音和那绝望的呼喊，
　　但对于他，那不是了不得的失败；
　　太阳依旧照着白腿落进绿波里；
　　那华贵而精巧的船必曾看见
　　一件怪事，从天上掉下一个男孩，
　　但它有某地要去，仍静静的航行。