Sex Perhaps
Kathryn Starbuck
A half century ago I was a welcoming port of call in
a buoyant(轻快的) place, a person to drop in on or
drop out of, adrift in a private sea of stormy
inwardness, trying to love myself with
conviction. The only ideas to reach my calm outer
deck fell off my young lovers' backs as they
unburdened themselves.
wanted to become painters or poets or -- two of
them -- painters and poets, eager to face
a decade or lifetime of envy and disappointment.
Why do you
aspire3(渴望,追求), I asked, don't you know,
silly boys, that either you are or you aren't?
They weren't. Neither was I. Oh how complacent
sea with me, I urged, where we can
embody5 no plan,
no hope, achieve nothing worth dying or
of delicious duty-free hand-me-down trips
to bed and back.
Did I know then that in a flash we'd be ancient,
that we'd be tending
shrines7 and gardens
and graves? Did I not know then that the honey we'd
so innocently spread would attract the mob
intellect of fire ants to bedevil(使痛苦,虐待) us in the night? How
did I know I'd outlive us all to become, at
last, a port of call I've come to call my own?
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