本帖最后由 ヮ成熟、羙° 于 2013-9-14 04:03 编辑
阳光下的时光
约翰•布莱德利
荷叶/译
虽然我金钱无多,却拥有许多夏日阳光灿烂的时光。----亨利•大卫•梭罗
当梭罗说这句话时,他在想儿时知晓的瓦尔登湖。
那时伐木者和火车还没有怎么破坏这里优美的景色。一个男孩可以来到湖里,仰面躺在一条小船里,懒洋洋地从一岸飘向另一岸,任海鸟潜水,燕子环飞。梭罗喜欢回忆那样的夏日阳光灿烂的时光,那时懒散是最迷人和富有成效的事情。
我也是个热爱湖水,热爱阳光,热爱夏日的男孩。阳光和夏日依旧,男孩和湖水已不复存在。男孩,今已成人,不再享有懒散漂流的时间。湖水已被大城市吞并。
当年苍鹭流连的沼泽地带,水已排干,盖满了房子。当年睡莲静静漂浮的湖湾,已变成了汽艇集散的港口。简而言之,男孩所爱的一切都不复存在,只留在成人的记忆中。
一些人坚信只有今日和明日才重要。但如果依此生活,我们会变得多么可怜!我们今日所做的有那么多事是滑稽可笑,徒劳无益的,很快就会被忘记。我们所憧憬明日要做的事有那么多根本就不会发生。
过去是一个银行,我们把最有价值的资产——记忆珍藏其中。记忆使我们的生命富有意义和深度。
那
些真正珍惜过去的人,不会为流逝的美好时光而悲叹,因为珍藏于记忆的时光永不丢失。
死亡既不能停止一个记忆中的声音,也不能擦除一个记忆中的微笑。在一个长大成人的男孩心中,有一湾湖水,时光也不能改变,他依然可以在阳光下静静地流连。
附:原文 Hour in the Sun John H.Bradley "…I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days."----- Henry David Thoreau When Thoreau wrote that line, he was thinking of the Walden Pond he knew as a boy. Woodchoppers and the Iron Horse had not yet greatly damaged the beauty of its setting. A boy could go to the pond and lie on his back against the seat of a boat, lazily drifting from shore to shore while the loons dived and the swallows dipped around him. Thoreau loved to recall such sunny hours and summer days "when idleness was the most attractive and productive business." I too was a boy in love with a pond, rich in sunny hours and summer days. Sun and summer are still what they always were, but the boy and the pond changed. The boy, who is now a man, no longer find much time for idle drifting. The pond has been annexed by a great city. The swamps where herons once hunted are now drained and filled with houses. The bay where water lilies quietly floated is now a harbor for motor boats. In short, everything that the boy loved no longer exists----except in the man's memory of it. Some people insist that only today and tomorrow matter. But how much poorer we would be if we really lived by that rule! So much of what we do today is frivolous and futile and soon forgotten. So much of what we hope to do tomorrow never happens. The past is the bank in which we store our most valuable possession: the memories that give meaning and depth to our lives. Those who truly treasure the past will not bemoan the passing of the good old days, because days enshrined in memory are never lost. Death itself is powerless to still a remembered voice or erase a remembered smile. And for one boy who is now a man, there is a pond which neither time nor tide can change, where he can still spend a quiet hour in the sun. |