作者简介

敦雅．米卡埃尔

　　美籍伊拉克诗人，1965年生于巴格达，90年代中期离开伊拉克而迁至美国密西根州，曾任《巴格达观察家报》记者，作品风格「颠覆」，2011 年获颁「联合国创作自由人道奖」，伊利沙伯．温斯洛则以翻译其诗作赢得「2004 美国笔会翻译奖」。米卡埃尔的第一本英文诗集《战争劳苦功高》(New Directions , 2005; Carcanet , 2006) 入围葛里芬奖，同时获纽约公共图书馆评为2005年25大书籍之一，并由伊莲娜．智娣翻译成意大利文，经Edizioni San Marco dei Giustiniani出版( 2001)。她的《外海之浪的日记》(New Directions, 2009) 则获得「2010阿拉伯美国书奖」，最新诗作《伊拉克之夜》将于2014年由New Directions 出版。
 
　　Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi-American poet, was born in Baghdad in 1965 and left Iraq to Michigan, USA in the mid-1990s. She has worked as a journalist for The Baghdad Observer and her work was found “subversive.” She was awarded the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing in 2001, and her translator, Elizabeth Winslow, won a 2004 Pen Translation Fund Award. Her first book in English, The War Works Hard (New Directions, 2005; Carcanet, 2006), was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize and was named one of the twenty-five books to remember in 2005 by the New York Public Library. It was also translated into Italian by Elena Chiti and published by Edizioni San Marco dei Giustiniani (2011). Mikhail’s Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (New Directions, 2009) won the 2010 Arab American Book Award. Her new poetry book The Iraqi Nights is coming from New Directions in 2014.

 

世界的形状

如果世界是平的，
犹如一块飞毯，
忧伤就会有始有终。

如果世界是方的，
当战争玩起捉迷藏的游戏，
我们就能找一个角落藏身。

如果世界是圆的，
我们的梦会在风车上轮回旋转，
我们就会平起平坐。

(薛庆国译)

The Shape of the World

If the world were flat
like magic carpet,
our sorrow would have a beginning and an end.

If the world were square,
we would hide in one of the corners
whenever the war played hide and seek.”

If the world were round,
our dreams would take turns in the ferris wheel,
and we would be equal.

(Translated by Elizabeth Winslow)