What can I hold you with?
我拿什么才能留住你?

I offer you lean streets, desperate
sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
我给你消瘦的街道、绝望的落日，参差不齐荒郊的月亮

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has
looked long and long at the lonely moon.
我给你一个久久望着孤月的人的悲哀

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living
men have honored in marble:
我给你我的祖先，我那被生者用大理石祭奠的死者

my father's father killed in the frontier
of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
我父亲的父亲在布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境死去，肺叶被两颗子弹击穿

bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers
in the hide of a cow;
蓄着胡子倒下，尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起

my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour-
heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú,
我母亲的祖父——昔年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋

now ghosts on vanished horses.
如今是失落的马背上一般的魂灵

I offer you whatever insight my books may
hold. whatever manliness or humor my life.
我给你我的书中也许有的一切领悟，生活之中有的一切的男子气概与幽默

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has
never been loyal.
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚

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.
我给你我所设法保全的我的真心——不营词造句，不与梦交易，不被时间、欢乐或逆境改变的衷心

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose
seen at sunset, years before you were born.
我给你，在你出生多年以前，我在薄暮邂逅那朵黄玫瑰的记忆

I offer you explanations of yourself,
theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
我给你你的解释，你的本来，你真实而惊人的存在

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.
我能给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的渴望；我正竭力用疑率、危险、失败来打动你

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