Terence

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day

A sunny day with leaves just turning

The touch-line new-ruled-since I watched you play

Your first game of football, then, like a satellite

Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys, I can see

You walking away from me towards the school

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

Into a wilderness, the gait of one

Who finds no path where the path should be

The hesitant figure, eddying away

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem

Has something I never quite grasp to convey

About nature’s give-and-take-the small, the scorching

Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay

I have had worse partings, but none that so

Gnaws at my mind still, perhaps it is roughly

Saying what God along could perfectly show

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go

我曾有過更慘的離別，但沒有一次它錐心刺骨甚於此

或許說只有上蒼才知道其中的道理

只有離開，自我始能開始

而放手讓他走，始証愛之深

英國桂冠詩人戴路易斯1962年的作品，這是南方朔的翻譯。

斯時，詩人送大兒子Tamasin去小學上課，到了學校，兒子掙脫詩人的手跑離開了父親，兀自加入同學往教室走去，留下佇立原處心境久久無法平復的父親──想當然耳卻又難以接受的──原來孩子長大了。 而這種與不捨與氛圍與時節相轇輵相連結的視覺震撼，讓詩人寫下令人無比動容的詩篇。  

波赫士說：

「所謂最好的時光，指著一種不再回返的幸福之感，不是因為它美好無匹從而我們眷念不休，而是倒過來，正因為它永恆失落了，我們於是只能用懷念來召喚它，因此才成為美好無匹。」

離別總是錐心刺骨，難就難在如何說服自己放手讓他走。

唉，love is proved in the letting go.

附記：

詩人就是獲得兩次奧斯卡金像獎最佳男演員的丹尼爾戴路易斯Daniel Day-Lewis的父親Cecil Day-Lewis。 Daniel Day-Lewis最近的一部電影是源自大導演費里尼半自傳式的藝術電影八又二分之一的華麗年代，英文片名還有趣的取名為Nine。

才華洋溢的Daniel Day-Lewis原來是家學淵源。