i offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon. 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 ofbuenos 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 peru, now ghosts on vanished horses. i offer you whatever insight my books may hold,whatever manliness or humour my life. i offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal. 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. i offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born. i offer you explanationsof yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself. ican give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; i am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. -- (我用什么才能留住你？ 我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落、破败郊区的月亮。 我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。 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。 我给你一个从未有过信仰人的忠诚。 我m.xIAｐE.cＯＭ