優(yōu)秀經(jīng)典英語詩歌：School of Practical Dissection

Kenny Williams

In the hands of the priest

the heart has to break

like crockery, for a single man,

not the human race

which we love into oblivion

and despise in general.

In the hands of the anatomist

it leaps, the heart, like a trout --

small, brown, and poached --

at the end of the line.

Faster students than our teachers,

we feel like boys playing hooky,

just wetting our toes

in the landlord's river,

passing his jug from

mouth to mouth.

優(yōu)秀經(jīng)典英語詩歌：The Dream of a Little Occupied Japan Doll

Kimiko Hahn

Among the hundred porcelain figurines,

the first one -- with slanted eyes, fat cheeks,

queue (though that's Chinese), and Chinese bonnet --

is my favorite. Among all those in pajamas

or gowns or the two in kimono,

the first is my favorite. Of those with rickshaw,

tambourine, or parasol and fan --

I keep on my desk the first one

though she -- or he -- is not doing a darn thing.

Here in sleep, rivalry is reserved.

And as dreams "tune the mind for conscious awareness"

perhaps this favoritism suggests

I've quit hoarding and now collect myself.

For Alice and Laurie

優(yōu)秀經(jīng)典英語詩歌：About Opera

Geoffrey Brock

Fuggirmi io sol non so

In the real world, lighting is undesigned;

here it's high art. After we find our seats,

silence our cells and smooth our ruffled minds,

and just before the curtains rise, houselights

go out. We vanish, and before our eyes

adjust, a splendid spectacle begins

in which we're borne, again, into the lives

of others -- figures whose shaded joys and pains

might be, for these three hours, ours. Yet

what can we hope to understand of them?

Words in a strange, old tongue (il fazzoletto!)

shine through the wordless music as through a scrim

by turns opaque and blindingly transparent --

words whose sources are masks, mouths gaping wide.

Still, some intelligence like a welder's current

leaps the orchestra pit (where shadows hide

that pulsing drum, those lacerating strings),

and something is spilling, something even grander,

perhaps, than life, from the woman who now sings,

now dies, as passion fills white space around her,

fills us, and tears are spilling down our faces --

there's too much light, it's all too brightly lit!

Kind curtains fall, and a governed dark replaces

all light but the glow of the pages in the pit.