Edwin Muir -- The Horses

The Horses
Edwin Muir (1887 –1959)

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

马
——安德鲁•缪亚

那场叫世界昏迷的七日之战过后
不过十二个月，
一个傍晚，夜色已深，这群奇怪的马来了。
那时候，我们刚同寂静定了盟约，
但开始几天太冷静了，
我们听着自己的呼吸声音，感到害怕。
第二天，
收音机坏了，我们转着旋钮，没有声音；
第三天一条兵舰驶过，朝北开去，
甲板上堆满了死人。第六天，
一架飞机越过我们头上，栽进海里。
此后什么也没有了。收音机变成哑巴，
但还立在我们的厨房角落里，
也许还立在全世界几百万个
房间里，开着。但现在即使它们出声，
即使它们突然又发出声音，
钟鸣十二下之后又有人报告新闻，
我们也不愿听了，不愿再让它带回来
那个坏的旧世界，那个一口就把它的儿童
吞掉的旧世界。我们再也不要它了。
有时我们想起各国人民在昏睡，
弯着身子，闭着眼，裹在穿不透的哀愁之中，
接着我们又感到这想法的奇怪。
几架拖拉机停在我们的田地上，一到晚上
它们象湿淋淋的海怪蹲着等待什么。
我们让它们在那里生锈——
“它们会腐朽，犹如别的土壤。”
我们拿生了锈的耕犁套在牛背后，
已经多年不用这犁了。我们退回到
远远越过我们父辈的土地的年代
接着，那天傍晚，
夏天快结束的时候，那群奇怪的马来了。
我们听见远远路上一阵敲击声，
咚咚地越来越响了，停了一下，又响了，
等到快拐弯的时候变成了一片雷鸣。
我们看见它们的头
象狂浪般向前涌进，感到害怕。
在我们父辈的时候，把马都卖了，
买新的拖拉机。现在见了觉得奇怪，
它们象是古代盾牌上的名驹
或骑士故事里画的骏马。
我们不敢接近它们，而它们等待着，
固执而又害羞，象是早已奉了命令
来寻找我们的下落，
恢复早已失掉的古代的友伴关系，
在这最初的一刻，我们从未想到
它们是该受我们占有和使用的牲畜。
它们当中有五六匹小马，
出生在这个破碎的世界的某处荒野，
可是新鲜乱跳，象是来自它们自己的伊甸园。
后来这群马拉起我们的犁，背起我们的包，
但这是一种自由的服役，看了叫我们心跳，
我们的生活变了；它们的到来是我们的重新开始。

（王佐良译）