邊緣
--Sylvia Plath
這女人已被修整完美。
她的屍
身漾著大事已定的微笑，
古希臘為義赴死則不容辭的憧憬
在她層層包裹的托加長袍中流盪著，
她赤裸的
腳掌似乎在說：
我們已走了這麼遠，到盡頭了。
死去的孩子個個蜷縮著，一條條白蛇，
各踞一只小小
奶缾，今已罄矣。
她已閉闔
將他們如花瓣般攏入她體內
如玫瑰花瓣閉垂於花園
僵冷之際而其芳香如血流淌
流淌自夜晚花朵香甜的喉頸深處。
無事值得月亮哀傷，
在骨白的修女頭罩下她凝視著。
她已見慣這類事情。
她的黑喪衣娑娑曳地。
Edge
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity*
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
*Greek necessity指古希臘哲學家蘇格拉底對自殺的看法：
雖然獻身於哲學之士無不希望死亡能將其靈魂從肉體中釋放，
但也不應該拋棄神靈指定他在塵世的義務而自殺，除非神靈
降下了使他有自殺的「必要」(anakge)的處境，就如蘇格拉
底面對雅典人對他的死刑判決時那樣。
“There Socrates says that while any man devoted to
philosophy must wish to die in order to free the soul
from the flesh, he ought not to kill himself and desert
the earthly service to which god has assigned him—
unless the god sends some necessity (anagke) upon him.
Such a necessity Socrates saw in the death sentence
passed on him by the Athenians.”
--K.W.M. Fulford, Grant Gillet & Janet Martin Soskice, ed.
Medicine and Moral Reasoning (Cambridge University Press,
1994), p.112.
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