離家的小孩

 




(Father: Cecil)




 


Image: 
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw88676/Cecil-Day-Lewis?LinkID=mp01220&wPage=1&role=sit&rNo=21

愛爾蘭裔英格蘭桂冠詩人塞希爾•戴-路易斯（Cecil Day-Lewis，1904-72）寫的〈離家的小孩〉（“Children Leaving Home”）:

父親寫給兒女的一首詩.....

Children Leaving Home

Soon you’ll be off to meet your full-grown selves,

Freed from my guardianship to sweat out your own life-sentence.

The house will be emptied of you,

For ever tie in time dissolves;

And you, once close to us like a whisper of blood, in due

Season return, if return you will, as polite acquaintance.

What will you then remember? The lime that crowded

Your bedroom window shading the square rose-ed beneath –

All such everyday sights,

Hours by boredom or wrath enclouded,

Or those which burst like a rocket with red-letter delights

In a holiday sky – picnics, the fair on Blackheath?

I heard you last summer, crossing Ireland by road,

Ask the mother to re-tell episodes out your past.

You gave them the rapt attention

A ballad-maker's audience owed

To fact caught up in fable. Through memory's dimension

The unlikeliest scene may be immortalised.

Forgive my coldness, now past recall,

Angers, injustice, moods contrary, mean or blind;

And best, my dears, forgive

Yourselves, when I am gone, for all

Love-signals you ignored and for the fugitive

Openings you never took into my mind.

At that hour what shall I have to bequeath?

A sick world we could not change, a sack of genes
I did not choose, some verse
Long out of fashion, a laurel wreath
Wilted ... So prematurely our old age inters
Puny triumphs with poignant might-have-beens. 

Soon you'll be leaving home, alone to face

Love's treacheries and transports. May these early years

Have shaped you to be whole,

To live unshielded from the rays

Which probe, enlighten and mature the human soul.

Go forth and make the best of it my dears.

(Son: Daniel)
 










Image:
 http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw08136/Sir-Daniel-Day-Lewis?LinkID=mp05955&search=sas&sText=Daniel+Day+Lewis&role=sit&rNo=0