摘自博尔赫斯《我用什么才能留住你》
原文：
What can I hold you with?
我用什么才能留住你？
Jorges Luis Borges
博尔赫斯
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落、破败郊区的月亮。
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;
my mother’s grandfather -just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.
我给你我已死去的先辈，人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵：在布宜偌斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹穿了他的胸膛。蓄着胡子的他死去了，士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我给你我写的书中所能包含的一切悟力、我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
我给你一个从未有过信仰人的忠诚。
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心——不营字造句，不和梦想交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
我给你对自己的解释，关于你自己的理论，你自己的真实而惊人的消息。
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。