All this I did without you

约 929 个字 预计阅读时间 3 分钟

Then I met you and I felt my monster stir, and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you have known and with your letter, my monster came out of its lair black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, malevolent. You will never know how terribly corrosive jealous is, it's a physical pain as though you had swollowed acid or red hot coals, it is the most terrible of feelings. But you can't help it-at least I can't. God knows I've tried. I don't want any ex-boyfriends sitting in church when I marry you. On our wedding day I want nothing but happiness, both for you and me. And I know I wouldn't be happy if there is a church full of your ex-conquests. When I marry you, I will have no past, only a future. I don't want to drag my past into our future and I don't want you to do it either. Remember I'm jealous of you because I love you. You are never jealous of something you don't care about.

Okay, enough about jealous.

Now let me tell you something. I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains. With honey-colored light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multi-colored nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans' feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, colored like shot silk: or blue as a kingfisher, or transparent as glass, or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover's breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers; fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten.

I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotized and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach, singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over the grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people, as they inched their way to the sea.

I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat, the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter's moon, Red Howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-colored reef fishes. I have seen humming birds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost

like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versalles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glassy as the Devil's hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things. All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.

All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice; your eyes, hair, lips, body; and above all, for your sweet, ever surprising mind, which is an enchanting quarry, in which it is my privilege to delve.

一首情诗

delve 钻研，迷人的，妩媚的

tune in

sit in for rows

peer review

non-technically-oriented

corrosive: 腐蚀的

malevolent：恶意，狠毒

coup：政变？

enraptured = be captured by

Jekyll and Hyde situation 双重人格

hypnotized：使着迷、催眠、恍惚

cicadas：蝉壳

emerald：绿宝石、祖母绿、翡翠？

ponderously 笨重地、生硬地

murderously

astringent：收敛的、涩的

hoarse 嘶哑的

sleek 圆滑的

cobweb 蛛网、圈套

heather 欧石楠

squeak 告密、吱吱声

skittering 深红的，鲜红的，罪恶深的

cornflower 矢车菊

glossy 光滑的，有光泽的

raven 渡鸦

rattlesnake 响尾蛇

admonishment 训诫，警告

crisp