1.这一年的黑暗之窝，这个坑，这个洞里，太阳躺下，永远不会升起，当绝望轻轻地降临，雪覆盖了所有的小路和窒息的道路，然后鹰脸的痛苦抓住了你，把你扔在地上，尖声喊叫，一把刀撕裂了丝绸。我父亲听到了撞击声，但他没有在意，午饭后还在打盹。然而，在1500英里以北的地方，我听到了撞击声，摔了一个盘子。你痛苦的爪子陷进我的脑壳里，蹲在那儿叫个不停，沉重得像一个盛满水、油或血的大容器，直到第二天，重量突然消失，我知道你的思想已经耗尽了，就像光明节的蜡烛燃烧得很快，蜡的面纱沿着光明节流下来。蜡烛摆好了，邀请了朋友，买了做烙饼和苹果煎饼的原料，那个解放的节日和冬至，陀螺像小行星一样转动。你是全吃还是不吃，吃一半还是不吃?“你什么也得不到，”修女说，这时房间停止了旋转。天使把你像洗衣服一样叠起来，你的身体瘦得像一件空衣服。你的衣服是挂在窗户上的帘子，原来是你的肉体，现在变成了玻璃。在佛罗里达的购物广场外，大喇叭播放着圣诞颂歌，棕榈树上挂满了闪烁的彩灯。 Except by the tourist hotels, the beaches were empty. Pelicans with pregnant pouches flapped overhead like pterodactyls. In my mind I felt you die. First the pain lifted and then you flickered and went out. 2. I walk through the rooms of memory. Sometimes everything is shrouded in dropcloths, every chair ghostly and muted. Other times memory lights up from within bustling scenes acted just the other side of a scrim through which surely I could reach my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain of time which is and isn't and will be the stuff of which we're made and unmade. In sleep the other night I met you, seventeen your first nasty marriage just annulled, thin from your abortion, clutching a book against your cheek and trying to look older, trying to took middle class, trying for a job at Wanamaker's, dressing for parties in cast off stage costumes of your sisters. Your eyes were hazy with dreams. You did not notice me waving as you wandered past and I saw your slip was showing. You stood still while I fixed your clothes, as if I were your mother. Remember me combing your springy black hair, ringlets that seemed metallic, glittering; remember me dressing you, my seventy year old mother who was my last dollbaby, giving you too late what your youth had wanted. 3. What is this mask of skin we wear, what is this dress of flesh, this coat of few colors and little hair? This voluptuous seething heap of desires and fears, squeaking mice turned up in a steaming haystack with their babies? This coat has been handed down, an heirloom this coat of black hair and ample flesh, this coat of pale slightly ruddy skin. This set of hips and thighs, these buttocks they provided cushioning for my grandmother Hannah, for my mother Bert and for me and we all sat on them in turn, those major muscles on which we walk and walk and walk over the earth in search of peace and plenty. My mother is my mirror and I am hers. What do we see? Our face grown young again, our breasts grown firm, legs lean and elegant. Our arms quivering with fat, eyes set in the bark of wrinkles, hands puffy, our belly seamed with childbearing, Give me your dress that I might try it on. Oh it will not fit you mother, you are too fat. I will not fit you mother. I will not be the bride you can dress, the obedient dutiful daughter you would chew, a dog's leather bone to sharpen your teeth. You strike me sometimes just to hear the sound. Loneliness turns your fingers into hooks barbed and drawing blood with their caress. My twin, my sister, my lost love, I carry you in me like an embryo as once you carried me. 4. What is it we turn from, what is it we fear? Did I truly think you could put me back inside? Did I think I would fall into you as into a molten furnace and be recast, that I would become you? What did you fear in me, the child who wore your hair, the woman who let that black hair grow long as a banner of darkness, when you a proper flapper wore yours cropped? You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. Rise, rise, and then you pounded me fl