I offer you lean streets,
我给你瘦落的街道，
desperate sunsets,
绝望的落日，
the moon of the jagged suburbs.
荒郊的月亮，
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,
我给你我已死去的祖辈，
the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:
后人们用大理石祭奠的先魂，
my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires,
我父亲的父亲阵亡于布宜诺斯艾利斯的边境，
two bullets through his lungs,
两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，
bearded and dead,
死的时候蓄着胡子，
wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;
尸体被士兵们用牛皮裹起。
my mother's grandfather
我母亲的祖父，
just twenty-four
那年才二十四岁，
heading a charge of three hundred men in Peru,
在秘鲁率领三百人冲锋，
now ghosts on vanished horses.
如今都成了消失的马背上的亡魂。
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold.
我给你我的书中所能蕴含的一切悟力，
whatever manliness or humour my life.
以及我生活中所能有的男子气概和幽默，
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心，
that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams
不营字造句，不和梦交易，
and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
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 explanationsof yourself,
我给你关于你生命的诠释，
theories about yourself,
关于你自己的理论，
authentic and surprising news of yourself.
你的真实而惊人的存在。
I can give you my loneliness,
我给你我的寂寞，
my darkness,
我的黑暗，
the hunger of my heart;
我心的饥渴，
I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。
——博尔赫斯 《我用什么才能留住你》