租客 The Tenant

租客

文/莫笑愚

这所房子是你的

房子里的家具、家具上的灰尘是我的

这墙上的挂钟是你的

挂钟的滴答声、滴答声里的日子是我的

属于你的还有篱笆墙、墙边的玉兰树

月季、狗尾草、院子里的漏缝地板

但这些东西不属于你：——

篱笆墙的影子、月季上的露水

玉兰与狗尾草的爱情

小院的冬天

白雪覆盖一切

雪地上赤脚踩出的脚印

玉兰树瘦小的花苞

它们都是我的

属于我的还有很多

清晨麻雀在耳边絮叨

炫耀它们吃蚂蚁和石子的本事

乌鸦偶尔前来示威

灰喜鹊善于当和事佬

这房子里住过的人

一定像我一样

目睹过蜘蛛与苍蝇的博弈

当我拨弄夜晚的琴弦

他隐形的十指也在拨弄

他把体味、白猫的饥饿和出走留给了我

留给我的还有他醉酒以后狂野的大笑

我养的老虎在搬进来以后

为了寻找他的白猫

在一个夏夜永久消失

它离开以后，盛夏到处是火

把篱笆墙烧成了灰烬

我来之前，房子空置了多年

现在充满了油烟

他留在这里的乡愁

让我的老虎

从海上来又回到夜的海上

The tenant

By Mo Xiaoyu

The house is yours, the furniture in the house, the dust

on the furniture, is mine

The clock on the wall is yours, the ticking sound

of the clock, the days that tick are mine.

What also belong to you are the fences and

along the fences, magnolia trees, roses, seteria, and the yard

with gapped wooden floor. But these things

don't belong to you -- shadow of fences, dew

on roses, love magnolia has for seteria.

In winter of the little yard, snow covers

every inch of the plants, the prints of barefoot

on the snow, the tiny buds

of magnolia trees, they are all mine.

There are many more that belong to me -- in early

morning sparrows garrulous in my ear to show off

their skills of knocking down ants and stones, crows

occasionally come to demonstration on my roof,

gray magpies, good at peacemaking, stayed with the man who

lived in the house, must've witnessed, like me, the game

of a spider catching a fly. When I

played two-string instrument at night, his invisible

fingers were strumming too. He left his smell,

his escaped hungry white cat to me, also left is his wild

drunken laughter. The tiger I raised,

after moving in, in order to find his white cat, forever disappeared

on a summer night. The summer was set on fire

afterwards, the fences burned to ashes. The house, vacant

for years before I moved in, now filled with cooking

smokes. The nostalgia he left here, made my Tiger

born on the sea, back to the dark sea.

(Written in Qingdao on September 9, 2017)

作者简介 About the poet:

刘剑文，笔名莫笑愚，湘籍居加州中海岸，诗人，译者，中国通俗文艺研究会诗歌委员会委员。农业经济学博士，康奈尔大学汉弗莱访问学者，曾就职于世界银行。写诗、译诗，出版有诗集《穿过那片发光的海》和《水与火的中间是烟》，任《新世纪中国诗选》副主编。诗作被选入多种诗歌年选。获卡丘.沃伦诗歌奖和第六届中国诗歌春晚十年诗歌成就奖等。

Jianwen Liu, pen named Mo Xiaoyu, is a poet who writes in Chinese and English. Having worked at the World Bank, Jianwen is an agricultural economist, a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow to Cornell University (2000/2001), and has published two poetry collections, "Across the Shining Ocean" and "Smoke between Water and Fire". She is also the co-editor of "New Century Chinese Poetry Anthonogy". Her poems have been included in various poetry anthologies and yearbooks in China. She has won poetry awards such as "Ten Years Achievement Award for Chinese Poetry" by the 6th Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala Awards in 2020 and "Culture Warren Poetry Award", etc. Jianwen is from China and lives in Central Coast of California.