原诗：
My mother stands at the screen door, laughing.
“Out out damn Spot,” she commands our silly dog.
I wonder what this means. I rise into adult air
like a hollyhock, I’m so proud to be loved
like this. The air is tight to my nervous body.
I use new clothes and shoes the way the corn-studded
soil around here uses nitrogen, giddily.
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. Often I sing
to myself all day like a fieldful of August
insects, just things I whisper, really,
a trance in sneakers. I’m learning
to read from my mother and soon I’ll go to school,
I hate it when anyone dies or leaves and the air
goes slack around my body and I have to hug myself,
a cloud, an imaginary friend, the stream in the road-
side park. I love to be called for dinner.
Spot goes out and I go in and the lights
in the kitchen go on and the dark,
which also has a body like a cloud’s,
leans lightly against the house. Tomorrow
I’ll find the sweatstains it left, little grey smudges.
.?????? .?????? .
Here’s a sky no higher than a streetlamp,
and a stack of morning papers cinched by wire.
It’s 4:00 A.M. A stout dog, vaguely beagle,
minces over the dry, fresh-fallen snow;
and here’s our sleep-sodden paperboy
with his pliers, his bike, his matronly dog,
his unclouding face set for paper route
like an alarm clock. Here’s a memory
in the making, for this could be the morning
he doesn’t come home and his parents
two hours later drive his route until
they find him asleep, propped against a streetlamp,
his papers all delivered and his dirty paper-
satchel slack, like an emptied lung,
and he blur-faced and iconic in the morning
air rinsing itself a paler and paler blue
through which a last few dandruff-flecks
of snow meander casually down.
The dog squeaks in out of the dark,
snuffling
me too me too
. And here he goes
home to memory, and to hot chocolate
on which no crinkled skin forms like infant ice,
and to the long and ordinary day,
school, two triumphs and one severe
humiliation on the playground, the past
already growing its scabs, the busride home,
dinner, and evening leading to sleep
like the slide that will spill him out, come June,
into the eye-reddening chlorine waters
of the municipal pool. Here he goes to bed.
Kiss. Kiss. Teeth. Prayers. Dark. Dark.
Here the dog lies down by his bed,
and sighs and farts. Will he always be
this skinny, chicken-bones?
He’ll remember like a prayer
how his mother made breakfast for him
every morning before he trudged out
to snip the papers free. Just as
his mother will remember she felt
guilty never to wake up with him
to give him breakfast. It was Cream
of Wheat they always or never had together.
It turns out you are the story of your childhood
and you’re under constant revision,
like a lonely folktale whose invisible folks
are all the selves you’ve been, lifelong,
shadows in fog, grey glimmers at dusk.
And each of these selves had a childhood
it traded for love and grudged to give away,
now lost irretrievably, in storage
like a set of dishes from which no food,
no Cream of Wheat, no rabbit in mustard
sauce, nor even a single raspberry,
can be eaten until the afterlife,
which is only childhood in its last
disguise, all radiance or all humiliation,
and so it is forfeit a final time.
In fact it was awful, you think, or why
should the piecework of grief be endless?
Only because death is, and likewise loss,
which is not awful, but only breathtaking.
There’s no truth about your childhood,
though there’s a story, yours to tend,
like a fire or garden. Make it a good one,
since you’ll have to live it out, and all
its revisions, so long as you all shall live,
for they shall be gathered to your deathbed,
and they’ll have known to what you and they
would come, and this one time they’ll weep for you.
The map in the shopping center has an X
signed “you are here.” A dream is like that.
In a dream you are never eighty, though
you may risk death by other means:
you’re on a ledge and memory calls you
to jump, but a deft cop talks you in
to a small, bright room, and snickers.
And in a dream, you’re everyone somewhat,
but not wholly. I think I know how that
works: for twenty-one years I had a father
and then I became a father, replacing him
but not really. Soon my sons will be fathers.
Surely, that’s what middle-aged means,
being father and son to sons and father.
That a male has only one mother is another
story, told wherever men weep wholly.
Though nobody’s replaced. In one dream
I’m leading a rope of children to safety,
through a snowy farm. The farmer comes out
and I have to throw snowballs well to him
so we may pass. Even dreaming, I know
he’s my father, at ease in his catcher’s
squat, and that the dream has revived
to us both an old unspoken fantasy:
we’re a battery. I’m young, I’m brash,
I don’t know how to pitch but I can
throw a lamb chop past a wolf. And he
can handle pitchers and control a game.
I look to him for a sign. I’d nod
for anything. The damn thing is hard to grip
without seams, and I don’t rely only
on my live, young arm, but throw by all
the body I can get behind it, and it fluffs
toward him no faster than the snow
in the dream drifts down. Nothing
takes forever, but I know what the phrase
means. The children grow more cold
and hungry and cruel to each other
the longer the ball’s in the air, and it begins
to melt. By the time it gets to him we’ll be
our waking ages, and each of us is himself
alone, and we all join hands and go.
.?????? .?????? .
Toward dawn, rain explodes on the tin roof
like popcorn. The pale light is streaked by grey
and that green you see just under the surface
of water, a shimmer more than a color.
Time to dive back into sleep, as if into
happiness, that neglected discipline ....
In those sixth-grade book reports
you had to say if the book was optimistic
or not, and everyone looked at you
the same way: how would he turn out?
He rolls in his sleep like an otter.
Uncle Ed has a neck so fat it’s funny,
and on the way to work he pries the cap
off a Pepsi. Damn rain didn’t cool one weary
thing for long; it’s gonna be a cooker.
The boy sleeps with a thin chain of sweat
on his upper lip, as if waking itself,
becoming explicit, were hard work.
Who knows if he’s happy or not?
A child is all the tools a child has,
growing up, who makes what he can.
诗歌的分析与解读
这首诗通过生动的意象和情感深度，优美地捕捉了童年温柔而复杂的瞬间。讲述者回忆起与母亲、家庭狗Spot的记忆，以及塑造孩子世界的日常经历。诗歌探讨了爱、成长、失落、记忆和身份等主题。孩子的视角既天真又富有洞察力，展现了对被爱的自豪感以及对生命和关系脆弱性的敏感意识。
诗歌以温暖的家庭场景开始，母亲的笑声和对狗的指令营造出活泼的氛围。孩子感受到自豪和爱的感觉，将自己的成长比作向上生长的锦葵植物。对俄亥俄州和自然世界的提及将诗歌扎根于特定的地点和时间，唤起了怀旧的家园感。
随着诗歌的推进，语调转向更为反思和沉重的情感，思考失落与悲伤——人们去世或离开的痛苦，随之而来的孤独，以及记忆如何成为我们一生中携带的故事。诗歌还触及生命的循环性质，讲述者自己成为父亲，理解代际之间的延续。
梦的意象和隐喻，例如讲述者向父亲扔雪球的梦，象征着过去与现在自我的持续关系。诗歌以雨和睡眠的安静场景结束，强调了清醒生活与梦境、幸福与艰辛之间的微妙平衡。
背景与作者介绍
这首诗是一篇反思性的作品，可能源于作者对童年和家庭生活的个人经历和观察。作者擅长将日常时刻与深刻的情感洞察结合起来，创造出与各个年龄段读者产生共鸣的叙述。
诗歌的背景设定在俄亥俄州，其对家庭生活的详细描述表明了与地点和记忆的深厚联系。作者的风格结合了抒情语言与自然意象，使诗歌既易于理解又富有意义。
对儿童和学生的教育价值
从这首诗中，儿童和学生可以学习到：
- 家庭和爱的重要性： 诗歌突显了母亲的养育角色和家的安慰。
- 理解情感： 它探讨了自豪、恐惧、失落和希望的感受，帮助年轻读者识别和表达自己的情感。
- 记忆的力量： 诗歌展示了记忆如何塑造身份，以及童年经历如何伴随我们一生。
- 与自然的联系： 通过对植物、动物和天气的提及，诗歌鼓励对自然世界的欣赏。
- 生命的循环： 它以温和、易于理解的方式介绍了成长、衰老和代际关系的概念。
生活与学习中的实际应用
- 情感素养： 教师可以利用这首诗讨论复杂的情感以及应对变化或失落。
- 创意写作： 学生可以受到启发，写下关于家庭和童年的诗歌或故事。
- 阅读理解： 诗歌丰富的意象和象征提供了分析和解读练习的材料。
- 文化和个人身份： 诗歌鼓励反思自己的背景和个人历史。
阅读理解问题
- 诗歌中的讲述者是谁，他们与其他角色的关系是什么？
- “出出，狗Spot”这句话暗示了狗和家庭氛围的什么？
- 诗歌如何描述被爱的感觉？
- 当有人去世或离开时，讲述者经历了什么情感？
- 诗中纸童的故事有什么重要性？
- 诗歌如何探讨记忆和童年的主题？
- 向父亲扔雪球的梦象征着什么？
- 诗歌如何描绘时间的流逝和生命的循环？
- 自然在诗歌的意象中扮演了什么角色？
- 诗歌传达了关于悲伤和失落的什么信息？
阅读理解问题的答案
- 讲述者是一个孩子，反思与母亲、狗和家庭的经历。
- 这句话显示了一种顽皮、亲切的命令，表明家庭氛围活泼而充满爱。
- 被爱的感觉被描述为令人振奋和自豪，像植物向上生长。
- 讲述者感到悲伤和孤独，需要安慰自己。
- 纸童的故事代表了责任、日常和生命的脆弱性。
- 诗歌展示了记忆作为我们不断修订的故事，塑造了我们是谁。
- 这个梦象征着父子之间的联系和时间的流逝。
- 诗歌将时间描绘为连续和循环的，童年记忆影响着成年生活。
- 自然被用来说明成长、变化和情感状态。
- 诗歌表明悲伤是生命中自然而令人惊叹的一部分，而不仅仅是可怕的事物。
这首诗对童年和人类经历进行了丰富的探索，使其成为教育和个人反思的宝贵资源。
