图片：年轻时的巢圣与一见如故的Chris Wallace_Crabbe教授在墨尔本合影。

《未完成的冶金术》

——致Chris Wallace-Crabbe

I. 铸币厂的学徒

六岁的男孩在皇家铸币厂

数着铜币上磨损的女王头像

——那是母亲钢琴课间隙的休止符

父亲从缅甸丛林寄来的信

在抽屉里发酵成

一种叫做"缺席"的合金

他学会用坩埚称量沉默：

一克是里士满的雨

一克是苏格兰学院的拉丁文

剩下的，全部熔进

那个关于"意义"的

永远无法锻造成形的模具

II. 耶鲁的再教育

一九六五年，他在纽黑文

重新学习浪漫主义——

不是华兹华斯的湖水

而是美国暴力的语法：

墨西哥城街头的敌意

越南在电视里的燃烧

构成一种新型的

形而上学创伤

他在弗洛伊德与克莱因之间

翻译人类的攻击性

如同翻译一首

永远无法押韵的诗

"死亡驱力"——

他在笔记本上写道——

"是英语中最美的

复合元音"

III. 语言的炼金术士

回到墨尔本，他成为

一个"和蔼的走私者"

将俚语偷运进崇高的殿堂

让"footy"与"epiphany"同桌

让"blokes"讨论"transcendence"

这种语域的越境

是他对殖民遗产的

温柔叛乱

他写《秋千》——

那个午夜在公园的孩子

在光明与黑暗之间

永不抵达的摆动

是存在的隐喻：

我们永远在途中

clarity never arrives

（清晰从未抵达）

IV. 食罪者

《多情食人族》——

这个标题本身就是

一场语义学的盛宴

他吃掉自己的悲伤

儿子的早逝

朋友的离去

将它们消化成

某种可以

喂养陌生人的

碳水化合物

elegy（挽歌）

在他手中不再是

古典的 consolation

而是一种

"持续的理性活动"

哀悼即思考

思考即活着

V. 雪的辩证法

在《我的脚饿了》里

他承认：雪

对一个桉树之子而言

永远是"他者"

白雪公主与雪鹅

在他干燥的童年里

显得"愚蠢"

但那个飘进丛林大火的

雪花——

比德的麻雀穿过

盎格鲁-撒克逊厅堂——

成为他最持久的意象：

生命的脆弱

在毁灭中的

短暂停留

VI. 八十岁的提问

现在，他坐在

墨尔本的某扇窗前

看着亚拉河

像一条

无法翻译的

注释

他还在问：

宇宙是否有意义？

如果有，

星星会重新排列吗？

季节会消失吗？

我们还需要

睡眠与排泄吗？

这些问题

比任何答案

都更忠诚地

陪伴他

超过六十年的

写作生涯

VII. 未完成的合金

他从未完成

那部关于"意义"的

终极配方

也许这正是

诗歌的本质：

一种永远

在冶炼中的

金属

他的遗产

不是答案

而是提问的方式

不是结论

而是思考的姿态

——那种将

高与低、悲与喜、

智与情

锻造成

不可分割的

合金的

技艺

尾声：给读者的附注

当你读这些诗行时

请记住：

真正的诗歌

不在纸上

而在你

与语言

相遇时

那瞬间的

电光火石

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

教会我们：

生活即思考

思考即生活

而诗歌

是这两者

在语言中的

婚姻。

THE UNFINISHED METALLURGY

For Chris Wallace-Crabbe

I. The Mint Apprentice

At six, the boy in the Royal Australian Mint

counted worn effigies of the Queen on copper coins—

those were the caesuras between his mother's piano lessons.

His father's letters from the Burmese jungle

fermented in a drawer into

an alloy called absence.

He learned to weigh silence in crucibles:

one gram of Richmond rain,

one gram of Scotch College Latin,

the rest poured into

the mold of meaning—

never to be forged into final form.

II. The Reeducation at Yale

Nineteen sixty-five: in New Haven

he relearned Romanticism—

not Wordsworth's waters

but the grammar of American violence:

the hostility of Mexico City streets,

Vietnam burning on television,

constituting a new

metaphysical trauma.

Between Freud and Klein

he translated human aggression

as one translates a poem

that will never rhyme.

"Death drive"—

he wrote in his notebook—

is the most beautiful

diphthong

in English.

III. The Linguistic Alchemist

Back in Melbourne, he became

a genial smuggler,

ferrying slang into the high temple,

seating footy beside epiphany,

letting blokes discuss transcendence.

This trespass of registers

was his tender

insurrection against colonial legacy.

He wrote The Swing—

that child at midnight in the park,

oscillating between light and dark,

never arriving.

Metaphor of existence:

we are perpetually en route;

clarity never arrives.

IV. The Sin-Eater

The Amorous Cannibal—

the title itself

a feast of semantics.

He devoured his own grief:

his son's early death,

the departure of friends,

digesting them into

carbohydrates

that might

nourish

strangers.

In his hands, elegy

was no longer

classical consolation

but a

continuous rational activity:

to mourn is to think;

to think is to live.

V. The Dialectic of Snow

In My Feet Are Hungry,

he confesses: snow

to a son of eucalypts

remains forever other—

Snow White and the snow goose

seemed absurd

in his dry childhood.

Yet that snowflake

drifting into bushfire—

the sparrow of Bede

passing through

the Anglo-Saxon hall—

became his most enduring image:

the fragility of life

in its brief sojourn

through destruction.

VI. The Interrogation at Eighty

Now he sits

at some Melbourne window,

watching the Yarra

flow like a

footnote

that cannot

be translated.

He still asks:

Does the universe possess meaning?

If so,

will the stars rearrange themselves?

Will seasons vanish?

Will we still need

sleep and excretion?

These questions,

more faithful than any answer,

have accompanied him

through six decades

of writing.

VII. The Unfinished Alloy

He never completed

the ultimate formula

for meaning.

Perhaps this is

the essence of poetry:

a metal

perpetually

in smelt.

His legacy

is not answers

but the manner of questioning;

not conclusions

but the posture of thought—

that craft of forging

high and low, grief and joy,

intellect and emotion

into an

indivisible

alloy.

Envoi: A Postscript to the Reader

When you read these lines,

remember:

true poetry

does not dwell on paper

but in the

lightning

of your encounter

with language.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

taught us:

to live is to think;

to think is to live;

and poetry

is the marriage

of these two

in language.