英译汉 12. 
    I am worried about the woman. I am afraid she might hurt herself, perhaps has already hurt herself—there's no way to know which of the return dates stamped on the book of poetry was hers. The book, Denise Levertove's Evening Train, belongs to the New York City Public Library. I checked it out yesterday and can keep it for three weeks. Ever since my husband and I moved to the city several months ago, I've been homesick for my books, the hundreds of volumes stored in my brother's¹ basement. I miss² having them near me, running my hands over their spines, recalling when and where I acquired each one, and out of what need.
    There's no way to know for certain that the phantom library patron is a woman, but all signs point in that direction. On one page is a red smear that looks like lipstick, and between two other pages, lying like a bookmark, is a long, graying hair. The underlinings, which may or may not have been made by the woman, are in pencil—pale, tentative³ marks. I study carefully, reverently, the way an archaeologist traces a fossil's delicate imprint. The rest is dream, conjecture, the making of my story. It's a weird obsession, I know, studying other readers' leavings and guessing the lives lived beneath. Even as my reasonable mind is having its way (This makes no sense. How can you assume? The marks could have been made by anyone, for any reason, over any period of time), my other self is leaving on its journey⁴. I've always been a hungry reader, what one friend calls a "selfish reader". But is there any other kind? Don't we all read to answer our own needs to complete the lives we've begun, to point us toward some light?
    Some of the underlinings in Evening Train have been partially erased (eraser crumbles have gathered in the center seams), as if the woman reconsidered her first responses or tried to cover her tracks. The markings do not strike me as those of a defiant woman but rather of one who has not only taken her blows but feels she might deserve them. She has underlined "serviceable heart"⁵ in one poem; in another, "Grey-haired, I have not grown wiser." If she exists⁶, I would like to sit with this woman. We seem to have a lot in common. We chose the same book. We both wear red lipstick, and I thought I am not so honest (the graying in my hair is hidden beneath an auburn rinse). I am probably her age or thereabouts.
    And from what she has left behind on the pages of Levertov's poems, it appears that our hearts have worn down in the same places. This is the part that worries me. Though my heart has mended, for the time being at least, hers seems to be in the very act of breaking,⁷ A present-tense pain pulses through each marked up poem, and the further I read, the clearer it becomes what she is considering. I want to reach through the pages and lead her out.