因火成烟

Light

Elizabeth Jennings

To touch was an accord
Between life and life;
Later we said the word
And felt arrival of love
And enemies moving off.

A little apart we are,
(Still aware,still aware)
Light changes and shifts.
O slowly the light lifts
To show one star
And the darkness we were.

光

触摸是生命与生命
之间的和弦；
后来我们说了那句话
于是感到爱已到来
所有敌意纷纷离开。

我们之间有一点距离，
（依然觉察，依然觉察）
光变幻不定。
噢 光慢慢升起
为了照亮一颗星
和我们从前的黑影。

Elizabeth Jennings believed writing a poem was "like mystical experience,a gratuitous gift" and confessed that she wrote "in order to know,to discover,to get things clear."She wrote quickly,with little revision,and produced more than twenty collections.

The outbreak of the Second World War coincided with Jennings' first serious foray into both poetry and religion,which she stated as "a real and important part of my life." Indeed,Jennings was the only Roman Catholic member of the Oxford group,which came to be known as The Movement and which included among others Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin.She later worked as a librarian at Oxford City Library and as a publisher's reader.

Jennings never married but was a much-loved member of the Oxford scene;a passionate connoisseur of ice-cream,she was frequently to be found at Oxford's Haagen-Dazs parlor and was such a dedicated film-goer that her local cinema granted he a free pass for life.

伊丽莎白·詹宁斯相信写诗“就像一种神秘的体验，一份免费的礼物”，她承认自己写诗“是为了了解，发现，把事情搞清楚。”她写作速度快，且很少修改，一共出版了20多本诗集。

二战爆发时，詹宁斯刚好开始认真地尝试涉足诗歌和宗教领域，她宣称，这两个领域是她“生命中真实而重要的部分”。确实，作为天主教会信徒，詹宁斯在牛津团体里面是独一无二的。这个团体后来成为著名的“运动派”，金斯利·艾米斯和菲利浦·拉金也是该团成员。其后，她在牛津市图书馆做图书管理员和出版评审员。

詹宁斯终身未婚，但在牛津地区一带备受爱戴。她狂热喜爱雪糕，经常出没在牛津的哈根达斯店。她还是一个热诚的影迷，以致当地的电影院准许她终生免票入场。