First

What Can I Hold You With? —— Jorge Luis Borges

    What can I hold you with?
    I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
    I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
    ...
    I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.
    I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
    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.
    I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
    I offer you explanationsof yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
    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.

 

我用什么才能留住你？

我给你瘦落的街道、绝望的落日、荒郊的月亮。

我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。

 

..

......

 

我给你我的书中所能蕴含的一切悟力，以及我生活中所能有的男子气概和幽默。

我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。

我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心——不营字造句，不和梦交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。

我给你早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。

我给你关于你生命的诠释，关于你自己的理论，你的真实而惊人的存在。

我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。

                                                           

                                                                     —— 博尔赫斯