——《喀尔巴阡边境》，1968年10月——给我哥哥有一次，在异国他乡，我突然病了。我正开车向南驶向一个大城市，这个城市以少之又少而闻名，那里有一座凯旋门的混凝土复制品，大小只有凯旋门的三分之二，被堵在了交通中，阻碍了交通。但那座城市离这儿还有几个小时的路程，那座山的形状就像熟睡的女人的尸体。我常常不得不放慢速度，因为成群的山羊或牛群在那些狭窄的道路上磨磨，以及我经过的那些更窄的、迷失的村庄石头街道。随着时间的流逝，我的胃痛越来越剧烈，越来越频繁，现在又发烧了。在村子里，向任何人求助是没有多大意义的。在那些地方，坦克在沿着多瑙河例行演习回来的路上，在阴凉处扎营，那一年连食物都很匮乏。这些语言莫名其妙地从两个斯拉夫语变成了德语，然后又变成了一些夹杂着呜和嘶嘶声的拉丁语。甚至当我试着说出最简单的短语时，经过那些凹凸不平的石头的农民们都停下来，只抬起头来看了一眼，无法理解。然后他们迅速转身离开，静静地消失在那一刻，就像树皮屑在下游旋转一样。 It was autumn. Beyond each village the wind Threw gusts of yellowing leaves across the road. The goats I passed were thin, gray; their hind legs, Caked with dried shit, seesawed along-- Not even mild contempt in their expressionless, Pale eyes, & their brays like the scraping of metal. Except for one village that had a kind Of museum where I stopped to rest, & saw A dead Scythian soldier under glass, Turning to dust while holding a small sword At attention forever, there wasn't much to look at. Wind, leaves, goats, the higher passes Locked in stone, the peasants with their fate Embroidering a stillness into them, And a spell over all things in that landscape, Like . . . That was the trouble; it couldn't be Compared to anything else, not even the sleep Of some asylum at a wood's edge with the sound Of a pond's spillway beside it. But as each cramp Grew worse & lasted longer than the one before, It was hard to keep myself aloof from the threadbare World walking on that road. After all, Even as they moved, the peasants, the herds of goats And cattle, the spiralling leaves, at least were part Of that spell, that stillness. After a while, The villages grew even poorer, then thinned out, Then vanished entirely. An hour later, There were no longer even the goats, only wind, Then more & more leaves blown over the road, sometimes Covering it completely for a second. And yet, except for a random oak or some brush Writhing out of the ravine I drove beside, The trees had thinned into rock, into large, Tough blonde rosettes of fading pasture grass. Then that gave out in a bare plateau. . . . And then, Easing the Dacia down a winding grade In second gear, rounding a long, funneled curve-- In a complete stillness of yellow leaves filling A wide field--like something thoughtlessly, Mistakenly erased, the road simply ended. I stopped the car. There was no wind now. I expected that, & though I was sick & lost, I wasn't afraid. I should have been afraid. To this day I don't know why I wasn't. I could hear time cease, the field quietly widen. I could feel the spreading stillness of the place Moving like something I'd witnessed as a child, Like the ancient, armored leisure of some reptile Gliding, gray-yellow, into the slightly tepid, Unidentical gray-brown stillness of the water-- Something blank & unresponsive in its tough, Pimpled skin--seen only a moment, then unseen As it submerged to rest on mud, or glided just Beneath the lustreless, calm yellow leaves That clustered along a log, or floated there In broken ringlets, held by a gray froth On the opaque, unbroken surface of the pond, Which reflected nothing, no one. And then I remembered. When I was a child, our neighbors would disappear. And there wasn't a pond of crocodiles at all. And they hadn't moved. They couldn't move. They Lived in the small, fenced-off backwater Of a canal. I'd never seen them alive. They Were in still photographs taken on the Ivory Coast. I saw them only once in a studio when I was a child in a city I once loved. I was afraid until our neighbor, a photographer, Explained it all to me, explained how far Away they were, how harmless; how they were praised In rituals as "powers." But they had no "powers," He said. The next week he vanished. I thought Someone had cast a spell & that the crocodiles Swam out of the pictures on the wal