PBS高端访谈:终将消逝的繁华（在线收听）

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight's Brief But Spectacular episode features Franny Choi, a poet whose work examines contemporary social issues. Her first poetry collection is called Floating, Brilliant, Gone, and is available now.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：今晚的《简短而精彩》的主角是弗兰尼·崔。她是一名诗人。她的作品针砭时弊。她第一部诗集名为《终将消逝的繁华》现已面世。

FRANNY CHOI, Poet: There are only so many parallel universes that concern us. In one, he isn't dead. In another, you drink light with your hands all winter. There is a universe in which no one is lying emptied in the street as the gas station burns, a universe in which our mothers never learned to wrap their bones in each small grief they'd found. There is a universe in which there is no difference between the past and the ground, another where the oceans pull the moon, and so on. This is an incomplete list. It has been abridged for your comfort. I could tell you about the many universes in which bad things happen to people other than the people you love. Yes, in another life, it's someone else's sister who climbs to the roof that night. In another life, the boys rise darkly from the asphalt to choke the engines of cruisers, and no one gives birth chained to a hospital bed, and no one's child washes up blue ashore. Sure, you can have these worlds. You can warm them in your hands at night. Just know that, by signing here, you agree also to be responsible for the universe where the oceans glow red, the universe where what we call shadow is pulsing with the musk of hooves, and especially the one in which humans do exist, but only in the nightmares of small children. Will you hold that one too? The version of the story that never learned to consider sound, and the one where sound is only the opposite of metal, and the one where not even the sound of metal is enough to quiet the dead? To me, this poem is one of the scariest things I have ever written, because I'm proposing a lot of things that are, that I truly don't know the answers to. But I think that, as artists and as also people who are thinking and living in the world, that's an important thing for us to try to do, to ask questions that we truly don't know the answers to, not just as a stepping point to get to the platforms that we're trying to put into the world. I think that there's no time for poems without stakes because people are literally dying, and I don't have time for a poem that has nothing to say about that, or at least nothing to say about the world in which something like that could be possible. My name is Franny Choi, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on imagining alternate realities.

弗兰尼·崔，诗人：这世界上有很多个平行世界与我们有关。在一个世界里，一个人可能死了；而在另一个平行世界里，他可能整个冬天都沉浸在喝酒之中。有那么一个世界——在加油站烧着的时候，没有人毫发无伤。在这个世界里，我们的母亲从来不会怜悯我们小小的悲伤。还有一个世界——过去和现在毫无差别，海洋反而会对月球产生引力。其实还有很多，只是内容会引起不适，所以不在这里一一尽述了。我可以告诉大家，在很多个平行世界里，总有坏事发生在其他人身上，而不是你爱的人身上。是的，在另一断人生里，那一晚，爬上屋顶的，不是你的姐姐，而是别人的姐姐。在另一段人生里，男孩们从柏油上艰难地爬起以关掉巡航舰的发动机；生孩子不仅限于在医院；不会再有孩子的尸体被冲上岸边。当然了，你们也可以活在这样的世界里，可以在夜晚用双手温暖世界。你们只需要知道，既然来到了这样的世界，就默认你们认同自己要为这个血腥的世界负责，对这个黑暗叫嚣着吞食一切的世界负责，尤其是要对这个人类生存的世界负责，这个在小孩子噩梦中出现人类的世界负责。这些世界的故事版本听起来从来都让人难受，在这样的世界里，金属的声音也成了主导。死者哀怨，就连金属撞击的声音也无法掩盖。就我本人而言，这首诗歌是我写过的最可怕的诗歌之一，因为这里提出的很多问题，我并不知道答案是什么。但我认为，作为艺术家，作为生活在这世界上并不停思考的人，有一件事会很重要——试着就我们不知道答案的事情发问。这不只是一个搭建平台，并推向世界的切入点。我认为不切中时弊的诗歌是不足以唤醒行尸走肉的人们的，与时弊无关的诗歌，我也不会浪费时间去写。如果这样的问题有可能发生，就应该在诗歌中有所阐述。我是弗兰尼·崔，这是我本期关于想象平行世界的《简短而精彩》。

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can find additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：想要观看其他期的节目，可以登录PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief。