平常是沒有這樣的意圖
不過在爾然的機緣間隨意的寫了這首詩
不貼一下好像滿可惜的
Self-Destructive Man
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
以上是引言 ptt沒有斜體無法標明
On a dreary routine day
In a clean, well-lighted street,
Strollers going by in absent-minded heed,
We are in the middle of separate trances
Pacing forward, aimless
In weary disconnection,
And notice a stern sober man
In sanity, aware of universal pain
Lifting a can gasoline
Speaking of sensible ravings
Of radical meanings:
“A self-destructive man feels completely alienated,
An outsider excluded from human community
Utterly alone, isolated in mute harmless sanctuary
Persecuted, indulging in frenzy, his minds fragmented.
‘Insane must I be,’ so he thinks,
Albeit fails to read the society,
As does he,
Being drawn to considerable losses;
Charmed by the beauty of grand irretrievability
Of epic catastrophes,
And wars ‘nd quakes ‘nd floods ‘nd droughts
Well serve the fine need.
Man wants chaos.
‘Dread and depression and riots and carnages
Feed them to our abyss!’
Hail the Dionysian hell
In which we revel
But the newspapers distort and veil
The human disastrous will
To build an eternal inferno.
Media condemn, lament in mourning
For incessant savage scourges,
Yet intends no elimination—
Of evils
Their holy vocation,
Tranquilizer injection,
Is to accustom our tolerance
To accepting violence.
Humans are in powerlessness,
Silenced, no option possible,
Except for the occasional and symbolical
Throwing ballot
And become puppets
Of the left or the right.
And it is my time
To rip down the invisible threads,
To break off the heavy irons,
And let my faint voice be heard.”
Once his discourse is complete,
In Buddha way the man upright seats.
Overhead he lifts the can,
Transparent chartreuse liquid soaking him wet
And pungent odor spreads.
Some passersby cross and take a look back;
Some spectators shocked still,
Some in silent awe, watching
The little match spark
In arch locus
Lightens the soaring flame
Which wraps the suffering martyr
In scorching pain.
Shrinking, his body carbonizes
Into ebony bough, twisting.
In the ember motionless he erects,
Abominable his complexion remains,
As if to curse everlasting dehumanization.
Afterword:
This is inspired by a scene from movie Waking Like by Richard Linklater. That
scene and the poem are in similar situation. I feel like writing about it but
find it possible only in the form of verse.
The epigraph is from “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden.