I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.

我給你瘦狹的街道，孤絕的余暉，荒郊的冷月。

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

我給你整個(gè)人的悲苦，那個(gè)人曾久久凝望寂寞的月亮。

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:

我給你我的祖先，死者的靈魂被生者銘刻在大理石上：

my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;

我父親的父親死于布宜諾斯艾利斯的前線，兩顆子彈穿過他的胸口，他死時(shí)蓄著胡子，被同袍裹于獸皮之內(nèi)；

my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.

我母親的祖父——才二十四歲——曾在秘魯率領(lǐng)三百軍士，如今已成死馬上的幽魂。

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.

我給你我書中所有的一切，給你我命里所有的男子氣和幽默。

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

我給你一個(gè)浪蕩子的忠心。

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

我給你我設(shè)法保存的生命核心——它難以言表，無法入夢，不被時(shí)間、歡愉和災(zāi)難所觸動(dòng)。

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

我給你一朵黃玫瑰的記憶，你未出生時(shí)，她曾在夕照中綻放。

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.

我給你關(guān)于你的闡釋，關(guān)于你的理論，關(guān)于你的真實(shí)而讓人驚嘆的消息。

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart;I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

我給你我的孤獨(dú)，我的暗夜，我內(nèi)心的饑渴；我要用我的無常、危險(xiǎn)和失敗來留住你。

- Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

--- 博爾赫斯