它蔑视肉体，不愿起动。
手仿佛受了伤，裹在
盔甲般的手套中；双脚糟糕透了，
仿佛所有的趾甲都被刚刚撕掉。
我怀着仇恨盯着它。远处，
矮树林呼啸着——在仓皇逃跑的
微光中悲哀地屈服着。椋鸟群，
一团更脏的冻雨般的雪，卷着烟雾，不断地
向东部的种植园飞去。
而拖拉机一直在下沉，
一级级深入它那
冰封的地狱。

起动杆
噼噼啪啪地开动了，就像噼啪作响的关节。
电池还有电——但它就像一只在试着接近
冻僵的母亲的羊羔一样无力——
座子折磨着我的臀骨，
以那让人如临太空般的冰冷咬噬着。
座子已与土地连成一体。

顺着下面那黑黑的喉咙，我喷出
劣质的火焰——它只是咳嗽。
它嘲弄我——我陷入了愚蠢的
铁疙瘩的圈套。我发动电池，
仿佛在用锤子不断地捶打
以便将这冻成一体的东西砸碎
而它叽里咕噜，又是大笑又是痛哭，嘲笑着
高兴起来。

它站着
忽然剧烈地抖动起来，似乎要慢慢地变大
就像一个即将现形的魔鬼
一个不常现出完整形状的物体——
突然，它从那与混凝土连在一起的坚固的整体中
弹射出来，摇摇晃晃地直奔一根柱子而去
充满了超人的力量和任性，大声叫问着
哪里？哪里？

差一些的铁在等待。自动升降杆跪着
操作杆们唤醒了被禁锢的重负，
链条栓插入坚硬的牛粪。
盲目震动着的铁，
被迫服从于残酷的铁，
轮子尖叫着挣脱锁链——

手指
被痛苦的重负
和燃烧的铁包围

眼睛
在布满甲烷的风中流泪

而拖拉机浑身冒汗，
狂怒着，颤抖着，高兴着。

Tractor

The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.

It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.

The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.

I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.

And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?

Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -

Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron

Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform

And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.

Ted Hughes