愛的動詞三態

是關於一個緩慢的夏天。

是關於一個女人，美麗又難以捉摸言喻的女人。

女人。

如同山岳難以征服的女人。

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

by Jack Spicer

What are you thinking about? 

I am thinking of an early summer. 
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain 
Pouring water. Shedding it 
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita 
Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, 
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. 
Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana 
Driving the hills crazy, 
A fast wind with a bit of dust in it 
Bruising everything and making the seed sweet. 
Or down in the city where the peach trees 
Are awkward as young horses, 
And there are kites caught on the wires 
Up above the street lamps, 
And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches. 

What are you thinking? 

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer 
As slow getting started 
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza 
After a lot of unusual rain 
California seems long in the summer. 
I would like to write a poem as long as California 
And as slow as a summer. 
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow 
As the very tip of summer. 
As slow as the summer seems 
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside 
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road 
Between Bakersfield and Hell 
Waiting for Santa Claus. 

What are you thinking now? 

I’m thinking that she is very much like California. 
When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways 
Traveling up and down her skin 
Long empty highways 
With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them 
On hot summer nights. 
I am thinking that her body could be California 
And I a rich Eastern tourist 
Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas 
Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California 
That I have never seen. 
Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, 
Send them. 
One of each breast photographed looking 
Like curious national monuments, 
One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway 
Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging 
In the world’s oldest hotel. 

What are you thinking? 

I am thinking of how many times this poem 
Will be repeated. How many summers 
Will torture California 
Until the damned maps burn 
Until the mad cartographer 
Falls to the ground and possesses 
The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. 

What are you thinking now? 

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.