今天聽的這首詩,是他少數沒有用英倫腔和迷人聲線來唸的。扮聲又扮口音的演繹,加上這首詩本身的諷刺,令我覺得比起他唸的浪漫情詩,這首更吸引。
Life Story
BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
After you've been to bed together for the
first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of
any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all
about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they
really and truly do
sincerely want to know your life story, and
so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them,
the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed
positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child
dropped on a bed.
You tell them your story, or as much of
your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence
allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the
oh
is just an audible breath, and then of
course
there's some interruption. Slow room
service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of
you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild
astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before
you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your
enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story,
exactly as they'd intended to all along,
and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel
at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor
and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of
exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?
Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a
lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in
hotel rooms.
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