原創詩：
No day is right for the apocalypse,
if you ask a housewife in Talking
Rock, Georgia, or maybe Hop River,
Connecticut. She is opening a plastic bag.
A grotesque parody of the primeval muck
starts oozing out. And behold,
the plastic bag is magic;
there is no closing it. Soap
in unsoftened water, sewage, asbestos
coiled like vermicelli, Masonite shavings,
a liquefied lifetime subscription
to
The New York Times
delivered all at once.
Empty body stockings, limp, forlorn,
like collapsed lungs. A blithering slur
of face creams, an army of photocopies
travelling on its stomach of acronyms,
tooth paste tubes wrung rigid and dry.
Also, two hundred and one tons
of crumpled bumpers wrapped in insurance
claims, slag, coal dust, plastic trimmings,
industrial excrementa. Lake Erie is returning
our gifts.
At first she thought she had won
something. Now it slithers through the house,
out windows, down the street, spreading
everywhere but heading, mostly, west.
Maybe
heading
is the wrong word,
implying shape and choice. It took
the shape of the landscape
it rippled across like the last blanket.
And it went west because the way lay open
once again: not the same fecund rug
the earth grew when white people scraped
their first paths to the Pacific
across the waves of the inland grasses.
Outside Ravenswood, West Virginia,
abandoned cars shine in the sun
like beetlebacks. The ore it took
to make the iron it took to make the steel
it took to make the cars, that ore
would remember the glaciers if it could.
Now comes another grinding, but not—
thanks to our new techniques—so slow.
The amiable cars wait stilly in their pasture.
Three Edsels forage in the southeast corner
like bishops of a ruined church.
There are Fords and Dodges, a Mercury
on blocks, four Darts and a Pierce Arrow,
a choir of silenced Chevrolets.
And, showing their lapsed trademarks
and proud grilles to a new westward
expansion, two Hudsons, a LaSalle
and a DeSoto.
I was hoping to describe
the colors of this industrial autumn—
rust, a faded purple like the dusty
skin of a Concord grape, flaking moss-
green paint with primer peeking
blandly through, the garish macho reds
insurance companies punish, the greys
(opaque) and silvers (bright), the snob colors
(e.g. British Racing Green), the two-tone
combinations time will spurn like roadkill
(1957: pink and grey), cornflower
blue, naval blue, royal blue, stark blue, true
blue, the blacker blue the diver sees
beneath him when he plumbs thirty feet—
but now they are all covered,
rolling and churning in the last
accident, like bubbles in lava.
And now my Cincinnati—the hills
above the river, the lawn that drained
toward Ricwood Ave. like a small valley of uncles,
the sultry river musk that slid
like a compromising note through my bedroom window—
and indeed all Cincinnati seethes. The vats
at Proctor & Gamble cease their slick
congealing, and my beloved birthplace
is but another whorl of dirt.
Up north near Lebanon and Troy and Rosewood,
the corn I skulked in as a boy
lays back its ears like a shamed dog.
Hair along the sow’s spine rises.
The Holstein pivots his massive head
toward where the barn stood; the spreading stain
he sees is his new owner.
What we imagined was the fire-storm,
or, failing that, the glacier.
Or we hoped we’d get off easy,
losing only California.
With the seismologists and mystics
we say the last California ridge
crumble into the ocean.
And we were read with elegies:
O California, sportswear
and defense contracts, gasses that induce
deference, high school girls
with their own cars, we wanted
to love you without pain.
O California, when you were moored to us
like a vast splinter of melon,
like a huge and garish gondola,
then we were happier, although
we showed it by easy contempt.
But now you are lost at sea,
your cargo of mudslides and Chardonnays
lost, the prints of the old movies
lost, the thick unlighted candles of the redwoods
snuffed in advance. On the ocean floor
they lie like hands of a broken clock.
O California, here we come,
quoting Ecclesiastes,
ruinous with self-knowledge.
Meanwhile, because the muck won’t stop
for lamentation, Kansas succumbs.
Drawn down by anklets of DDT,
the jayhawk circles lower and lower
while the sludge moils and crests.
Now we are about to lose our voices
we remember that tomorrow is our echo.
O the old songs, the good days:
bad faith and civil disobedience,
sloppy scholarship and tooth decay.
Now the age of footnotes is ours.
Ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid.
While the rivers thickened and fish
rose like vomit, the students of water
stamped each fish with its death date.
Don’t let a chance like this go by,
they thought, though it went by
as everything went by—towers
of water flecked by a confetti
of topsoil, clucked tongues, smug
prayers. What we paid too much for
and too little attention to,
our very lives, all jumbled
now and far too big in aggregate
to understand or mourn, goes by,
and all our eloquence places its
weight on the spare word
goodbye
.
詩的分析與解讀
這首詩呈現了一幅生動而令人不安的環境衰退與社會忽視的描繪。它以一位家庭主婦打開塑膠袋的畫面開場，這成為了污染與廢物無法阻擋擴散的隱喻。詩的語調沉重而反思，強調了工業和人為垃圾在日常生活中無處不在的存在，象徵著一場緩慢的末日。
意象引人注目：「原始污泥的可笑模仿」暗示著曾經自然純淨的事物已被有毒的人工廢物取代。詩歌穿越了美國的各種風景——從喬治亞州的Talking Rock到西維吉尼亞州的Ravenswood，再到辛辛那提——展示了污染和工業衰退如何影響不同地區。被遺棄的汽車、生鏽的金屬和褪色的顏色象徵著工業美國的衰退和曾經繁榮社會的喪失。
詩中還觸及了歷史和文化主題，提到向西擴張及人類進步的環境後果。對加州想像中毀滅的提及和對其的悼詞反映了對環境和社會未來的更廣泛焦慮。詩的結尾帶著一種無奈和失落的語調，「再見」這個詞概括了因忽視和環境破壞而失去的一切的終結感。
背景與作者介紹
這首詩可能屬於環境詩的類型，該類型在20世紀末強烈興起，因為人們對污染、工業廢物和生態崩潰的關注日益增加。作者使用現代、幾乎對話式的風格，將詳細的、有時技術性的廢物和衰退描述與情感和文化反思相融合。
這位詩人可能是一位深切關注環境問題和工業化社會後果的美國作家。他們的作品反映了對消費文化、工業廢物和自然景觀及社區緩慢毀滅的批判性看法。這首詩作為一個強有力的提醒，表達了人類生活與環境之間的相互聯繫。
反思與見解
閱讀這首詩邀請我們反思人類活動對地球的影響及解決環境問題的緊迫性。它鼓勵我們意識到日常行為，如使用塑膠袋，如何對更大的危機造成貢獻。詩中詳細的意象幫助讀者視覺化污染的規模以及自然美和工業活力的喪失。
它還突顯了記憶和歷史的重要性，展示了地方和物品如何承載過去的故事，以及它們的衰退如何預示著更廣泛的社會變化。詩的憂鬱語調提醒我們，環境退化不僅是物理上的損失，也是文化和情感上的損失。
教育價值與學生學習要點
從這首詩中，學生可以學到幾個重要的課題：
- 環境意識： 理解污染和廢物對生態系統和社區的後果。
- 意象與象徵： 詩人如何使用生動的描述和象徵（如塑膠袋、生鏽的汽車）來傳達複雜的思想。
- 歷史背景： 詩中提到美國歷史，如向西擴張、工業化和文化變遷，提供跨學科的學習機會。
- 批判性思維： 鼓勵學生思考人類責任和工業進步的長期影響。
- 詞彙發展： 像「可笑的」、「模仿」、「凝結」和「排泄物」等詞彙豐富了學生的語言技能。
實用應用與生活教訓
- 環境責任： 學生可以通過減少塑膠使用、回收和支持可持續做法來應用詩的訊息。
- 文化反思： 理解文學如何反映社會問題可以增強同理心和意識。
- 創意表達： 鼓勵學生寫自己的詩或關於環境主題的文章。
- 跨學科學習： 將文學與科學（生態學、化學）和歷史聯繫起來。
閱讀理解問題
- 詩中塑膠袋象徵什麼？
- 詩人如何描述工業廢物對環境的影響？
- 提到哪些美國地點，為什麼它們重要？
- 詩中喚起了對環境未來的什麼情感？
- 詩如何將歷史事件與環境問題聯繫起來？
- 詩中重複使用汽車品牌和顏色的意義是什麼？
- 為什麼詩以「再見」結尾？
- 這首詩如何激勵讀者重新思考他們的日常習慣？
閱讀理解問題的答案
- 塑膠袋象徵著污染和環境退化的無法阻擋擴散。
- 詩人將工業廢物描述為一種可怕的、壓倒性的力量，侵入家庭和風景，象徵著衰退和忽視。
- 提到的地點如喬治亞州的Talking Rock、康涅狄格州的Hop River、西維吉尼亞州的Ravenswood、辛辛那提和加州，顯示了污染的普遍性及其文化影響。
- 詩喚起了對環境未來的悲傷、失落和無奈的情感。
- 它將歷史上的向西擴張和工業增長與隨之而來的環境破壞聯繫起來，顯示了進步的代價。
- 汽車品牌和顏色代表了工業過去及其衰退，象徵著失去的自豪感和逐漸消逝的活力。
- 「再見」象徵著對因人類忽視和污染而受損的世界的最後告別。
- 它鼓勵讀者重新考慮他們的環境影響，並採取更可持續的習慣。
這首詩作為一個強有力的教育工具，促進環境意識和對人類與自然之間關係的批判性思考。
