My companion and I then had a mediocre lunch in one of the local coffee shops. There seemed to be no official lunch. I was now thoroughly out of sorts and was ready to return to New York, but she wanted very much to stay for at least part of Spender's poetry workshop, and so we did.
然后我和我的女友在当地的一家咖啡馆吃了顿不人流的午餐，会议方好像没有准备正式的午餐。此时我情绪不佳，厌烦透顶，想马上启程回纽约去，但是我的女友非常想多待一阵，至少等到看看部分斯彭德的诗歌讲习班，所以我们留了下来。
I had never been to a poetry workshop and couldn't imagine what one would consist of. I had been to plenty of physics workshops and knew only too well what they consisted of: six physicists in a room with a blackboard shouting at one another. The room where Spender was to conduct his workshop was full, containing perhaps thirty people. One probably should not read too much into appearances, but these people—mostly women—looked to me as if they were clinging to poetry as if it were some sort of life raft. If I had had access to Spender's journals (they came out a few years later), I would have realized that he was very used to all of this. In fact, he had been earning his living since his retirement from University College in London a decade earlier by doing lectures and classes for groups like this. I would also have realized that by 1981 he was pretty tired of it, and pretty tired of being an avatar for his now dead friends—Auden, C. Day Lewis, and the rest. He had outlived them all, but was still under their shadow, especially that of Auden, whom he had first met at Oxford at about the same age and same time that Oppenheimer had met Dirac.
我从未参加过这种诗歌讲习班，无法想象其中会有些什么内容。我倒是去过很多物理学讲习班，因此太知道它们都做什么：六个物理学家在一个带有黑板的房间里互相叫嚷。斯彭德要举行诗歌讲习班的房间里挤得满满的，容纳了大约有三十个人。一个人也许不应该过于以貌取人，可是这些人大多数是女士——在我看来好像过于迷恋诗歌，视它为救命稻草一般。如果那时我能有幸接触到斯彭德的日记的话(这些日记几年以后才出版），我就会知道他对所有的这一切已经习以为常了。事实上，自从十年前他从伦敦的大学学院退休以后就以给这样的人群做讲座和开讲习班维持生计。我还得知，1981年的时候他对此已经十分厌倦了，他也厌倦了做他如今已经过世了的朋友——奥登、C戴·刘易斯以及其他人的替身。他比他们每个人都长寿，可是仍然活在他们的阴影里，尤其是奥登，那个他在牛津初次结识的人，刚好和奥本海默遇到狄拉克是同一年龄，也是同一时期。
Spender walked in with a stack of poems written by the workshop members. He gave no opening statement, but began reading student poems. I was surprised by how awful they were. Most seemed to be lists: "sky, sex, sea, earth, red, green, blue," and so forth.
斯彭德带着一叠讲习班成员写的诗走了进来。他没做任何开场就开始读起学员们的诗来。我惊讶于那些诗竟然写得如此糟糕，大多数都像一串清单，什么“天空、性爱、海洋、大地、红色、绿色、蓝色”等等。