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Melody Chavis loves natures. She believes bringing it back into the city is one way to help save her run-down,crime-ridden neighborhood. Planting trees along the street where she livesseems like one step in the right direction, but it turned out to be not quite so simple.
梅洛迪·查维斯热爱大自然。她相信把大自然带回城市是帮助挽救她那衰落的、频频发生犯罪活动的住宅区的一种办法。在她居所的街道旁植树似乎是迈出的正确可行的一步，但结果表明事情并非那么简单。
Street Trees
街树
Melody Ermachild Chavis
梅洛迪·厄玛蔡尔德·查维斯
I was drawn to my upstairs bedroom window by shouting in the street. The shouter was a middle-aged black man in shabby pants, and he strode, fast, right down the middle of the street. Storming across the intersection, the man beat the air with his fists and shouted intothe sky. "Somalia!" he cried. "Somalia!"
街上的喊叫声把我吸引到楼上卧室的窗边。喊叫的是个穿着破破烂烂裤子的中年黑人;他沿着街道中央大踏步快速走去。那汉子一边闯过十字路口，一边挥舞拳头，仰天大吼。"索马里!"他喊道，"索马里!"
Ours is a neighborhood where poverty and addiction have made misery for years, and this waswhen airlifts of food to the Horn of Africa were all over the nightly news. "I know what you mean," I thought. "Why there? Why feed them but not you?"
多年来，我们的住宅区因贫困和吸毒一直处于悲惨境地，这事发生期间，夜晚新闻中正广为报道空运食物到非洲之角的消息。"我知道你是什么意思，"我想，"为什么运到那儿？为什么给他们吃而不给你吃?"
Then he walked up to the newly planted tree under my window, grabbed its skinny trunk withboth hands, yanked it over sideways, and cracked it in half on his knee. He threw the tree's leafy top onto the sidewalk and stomped off, cursing. I pressed my palms to the glass as he disappeared up the sidewalk.
过一会儿，他走到我窗下最近种的一棵树旁，用双手抓住细瘦的树干，使劲往一边拔，放在膝上拗成两半。他把带叶的树梢扔到人行道上，一边咒骂一边噔噔地踩着重步离去。我把手掌紧紧贴在窗上，看着他在人行道上渐渐消失。
