吉薩貨幣蟲頌歌(T. F. Grimsdale, 1948)
這岩床三千萬年來你們長臥
從中拽起幾枚石心硬幣
散佈孳息不已的通貨
此番同謀何等奇僻?
在你們盛極的壟斷世代
是否已擰出石灰奠造望外之地
從那浩瀚洶湧的古地中海
而償了向大自然賒的債?
興許天命終不可避,你們的原質
搭上地球循環的興替
也(超乎智識或意志地)在
大自然最近一次痙攣的空窗期
搭造人類的首個霸權——見諸無奇不有的
生命長史,更是奇中之奇
你們億萬族類生生死死
充塞在埃及帝國崛起之所在
構成厚實的礎材
由大自然的創作者形塑大地
在其上人類古老的文明發跡
祭司與神君統御、爭鬥或遭戮
(他們的不朽只是瑣碎作態,自珍神性則是徒然吹捧)
不顧被桎梏的屍骸和廣袤大漠,
歷任法老驅策他們無數的奴隸
在鞭笞下死命苦工
而——妙的是——其所開採,你們葬身的這些岩石
也堆造出國王的葬身之地,金字塔
那標界他們終末飛地的浮誇遺跡
ODE TO A COLLECTION OF NUMMULITES GIZEHENSIS
Stone-hearted pennies, plucked from the rocky bed
Wherein for thirty million years you lay
What queer concurrences conspired to spread
Your fertile currency? And did you pay
Some debt to Nature, rendering back the lime
You’d wrung from the vast, turbulent Tethyan sea
To found undreamed-of lands – forestalling Time,
Who wrought new continents from your Apogee?
Perhaps your role was fore-ordained, your plasm
Fated to ride Earth’s cyclical exchange
And (beyond knowledge or volition) set
The vacant stage for Nature’s newest spasm,
Man’s first hegemony – of all things strange
In Life’s long history the strangest yet.
Such billions of your kind as lived, and died
Heaped on the site where Egypt was to stand,
Comprise the massive elements applied
By Nature’s architects to shape the land
Whereon Man’s earliest civilisation rose,
And priests and king-Gods ruled, fought, and were slain
(Their immortality a futile pose, Their prized divinity extolled in vain).
Careless of shackled corpses, desert-strewn,
Successive Pharaohs drove their myriad slaves
To toil their lives out ‘neath the lashes’ stings,
While – aptly – from these rocks, your tombs, was hewn,
Stone for the Pyramids – the tombs of Kings,
Gross monuments to mark their last enclaves.
~T. F. Grimsdale, 1948

