Louise Glück의 시 "Autumn" "Poem"

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Louise Glück의 시집 "Winter Recipes From The Collective" (2021)에서 시 "Autumn"과 "Poem" 두 편을 여기 적어 둔다. 둘 다 첫 연만 읽고 말아도 좋다.

 

"First Loves" (C. Ciuraru 편집)에 시인 Kenneth Koch가 열다섯 살 때 Shelley의 시를 읽은 경험에 대해 쓴 부분이 생각나서 다시 읽어본다.

    "I was more startled and charmed by single lines, or sometimes by a few lines at a time, than by whole poems. Shelly's whole poems somewhat alarmed me. The further I got into them, the less I understood and the less I seemed to have a chance of understanding anything.... Reading one line, however, almost always the first line, I felt safe. I was transported by the lovely, lifted language.... "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being" was joy itself, sheer exhilaration: it had in it wind, wildness, westness, breath, autumn, and being. all at once --- what heart wouldn't leap at them? Mine did. When I read the next two lines, though, I was lost."

 

"Poem"은 첫 연 "Day and night come/ hand in hand like a boy and a girl"이 왠지 낯익었는데 여섯째 연 "... We pass/ the boy and girl we saw at the beginning"에 이르니 분명 전에 읽었던 시다. 이 블로그에서 검색해 보니 사진일기(1/4/2022)에, 시집 표지 사진에 곁들여, 이 시의 첫 연을 인용하고 있다.

 

(동양화 풍의 시집 표지 디자인은, 서울에서 태어나고 뉴욕에 살고 있는, Na Kim의 작품이다. "A Conversation with Na Kim"에 따르면: Kim currently works as the art director of The Paris Review and creative director of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her designs have been named among The New York Times’ best book covers of the year for the past nine consecutive years. 이 사이트에서는 그녀의 그림들과 책 표지 디자인들을 볼 수 있다.) 

 

 

Autumn

 

 

The part of life

devouted to contemplation

was at odds with the part

committed to action.

 

                    *

 

Fall was approaching.

But I remember

it was always approaching

once school ended.

 

                    *

 

Life, my sister said,

is lke a torch passed now

from the body to the mind.

Sadly, she went on, the mind is not

there to receive it.

 

The sun was setting.

Ah, the torch, she said.

It has gone out, I believe.

Our best hope is that it's flickering,

fort/da, fort/da, like little Ernst

throwing his toy over the side of his crib

and then pulling it back. It's too bad,

she said, there are no children here.

We could learn from them, as Freud did.

 

                    *

 

We would sometimes sit

on benches ouside the dining room.

The smell of leaves burning.

 

Old people and fire, she said.

Not a good thing. They burn their houses down.

 

                    *

 

How heavy my mind is,

filled with the past.

Is there enough room

for the world to penetrate?

It must go somewhere,

it cannot simply sit on the surface ---

 

                    *

 

Stars gleaming over the water.

The leaves piled, waiting to be lit.

 

                    *

 

Insight, my sister said.

Now it is here.

But hard to see in the darkness.

 

You must find your footing

before you put your weight on it.

 

 

 

Poem

 

 

Day and night come

hand in hand like a boy and a girl

pausing only to eat wild berries out of a dish

painted with pictures of birds.

 

They climb the high ice-covered mountain,

then they fly away. But you and I

don't do such things ---

 

We climb the same mountain;

I say a prayer for the wind to lift us

but it does no good;

you hide your head so as not

to see the end ---

 

Downward and downward and downward and downward

is where the wind is taking us;

 

I try to comfort you

but the words are not the answer;

I sing to you as mother sang to me ---

 

Your eyes are closed. We pass

the boy and girl we saw at the beginning;

now they are standing on a wooden bridge;

I can see their house behind them;

 

How fast you go they call to us,

but no, the wind is in our ears,

that is what we hear ---

 

And then we are simply falling ---

 

And the world goes by,

all the worlds, each more beautiful than the last;

 

I touch your cheek to protect you ---