of the water she would give her children once home, and drink a little herself. On she goes... through the dreaded dusts of an African drought.
我们是一帮子疲惫不堪的人，生活在我们的世界上——我们这个遭受威胁的世界。我们动辄就讽刺甚至是冷嘲热讽。有些词语和思想我们几乎没有用过，它们已经变得如此的陈腐过时。然而我们也许可以恢复一些已经失去其力量的词语。
We are a jaded lot, we in our world—our threatened world. We are good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some words that have lost their potency.
我们有一座宝库——一座文学的宝库，这座宝库可以追溯到古埃及人、古希腊人、古罗马人。它一直存在着，这一文学的财富，不管是谁幸运之至，接触到了它，就会一次又一次地发现它。一座宝库。假如它不复存在了。我们将会变得多么的贫穷，多么的空虚啊。
We have a treasure-house—a treasure—of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come on it. A treasure. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how empty we would be.
我们拥有一份语言、诗歌和历史的遗产，这份遗产是取之不尽、用之不竭的。它一直在这里，总是在这里。
We own a legacy of languages, poems, histories, and it is not one that will ever be exhausted. It is there, always.
我们有一份故事的遗产，由老一代讲故事的人传下来的故事，这些讲故事的人的名字，有的我们知道，有的我们不知道。这些讲故事的人可以往过去走啊，走啊，一直走回到森林里的一片空地，空地上点燃着熊熊大火，萨满教（注：萨满文化是个世界性的文化现象，其流行区域集中在亚洲北部和中部，乃至欧洲北部、北美、南美和非洲，这是广义的萨满教。狭义的萨满教为阿尔泰语系如维吾尔、哈萨克、塔塔尔、蒙古、锡伯等民族所信仰，其信仰主要是万物有灵论、祖先崇拜和自然崇拜。萨满教的基本特点是没有始祖、没有教义、崇拜多种神灵，没有组织、没有固定的庙宇教堂、没有专门的神职人员，主要活动是跳神，还有一个显著特点是教徒多为女性。）的老巫师们在跳舞，唱歌，因为我们的故事的遗产是在篝火、魔法、灵异的世界里开始的。如今，这一遗产还在那里保留着。
We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.