Louise Glück의 시 또 네 편

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생각난 김에, 4년 전에도 도서관에서 빌려다 읽은 Louise Glück, "Poems 1962 - 2012"를 다시 빌려왔다. 반납일이 가까워서야 650쪽이 넘는, 이 책을 펼치고 몇 쪽에 걸친 긴 시는 건너뛰면서 나머지 시들은 다 대강 '보기'는 한 것 같다. 어떤 시는, 분명, 전에 이 블로그에 언급한 것 같다. 검색해 보니 전에 여기 올린 게 열 편이 넘는다.   네 편의 시를 새로 여기 적어 놓기로 한다.

 

 

 

TWILIGHT

 

 

All day he works at his cousin's mill,

so when he gets home at night, he always sits at this one window,

sees one time of day, twilight.

There should be more time like this, to sit and dream.

It's as his cousin says:

Living--- living takes you away from sitting.

 

In the window, not the world but a squared-off landscape

representing the world. The seasons change,

each visible only a few hours a day.

Green things followed by golden things followed by whiteness---

abstractions from which come intense pleasures,

like the figs on the table.

 

At dusk, the sun goes down in a haze of red fire between two poplars.

It goes down late in summer---sometimes it's hard to stay awake.

 

Then everything falls away.

The world for a little longer

is something to see, then only something to hear,

crickets, cicadas.

Or to smell sometimes, aroma of lemon trees, of orange trees.

Then sleep takes this away also.

 

But it's easy to give things up like this, experimentally,

for a matter of hours.

 

I open my fingers---

I let everything go.

 

Visual world, language,

rustling of leaves in the night,

smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.

 

I let it go, then I light the candle.

 

 

          --- from "A Village Life" (2009)

 

 

 

SUNSET

 

 

At the same time as the sun's setting,

a farm worker's burning dead leaves.

 

It's nothing, this fire.

It's a small thing, controlled,

like a family run by a dictator.

 

Still, when it blazes up, the farm worker disappears;

from the road, he is invisible.

 

Compared to the sun, all the fires here

are short-lived, amateurish--

they end when the leaves are gone.

Then the farm worker reappears, raking the ashes.

 

But the death is real.

As though the sun's done what it came to do,

made the field grow, then

inspired the burning of earth.

 

So it can set now.

 

 

          -- from "A Village Life" (2009)

 

 

 

UNWRITTEN LAW

 

 

Interesting how we fall in love:

in my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often---

so it was in my youth.

And always with rather boyish men---

unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves:

in the manner of Balanchine.

Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing.

I, with my inflexible Platonism,

my fierce seeing of only one thing at a time:

I ruled against the indefinite article.

And yet, the mistakes of my youth

made me hopeless, because they repeated themselves,

as is commonly true.

But in you I felt something beyond the archetype---

a true expansiveness, a buoyance and love of the earth

utterly alien to my nature. To my credit,

I blessed my good fortune in you.

Blessed it absolutely, in the manner of those years.

And you in your wisdom and cruelty

gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.

 

         

          -- from "Vita Nova" (1999)

 

 

 

SNOW

 

 

Late December: my father and I

are going to New York, to the circus.

He holds me

on his shoilders in the bitter wind:

scraps of white paper

blow over the railroad tics.

 

My father liked

to stand like this, to hold me

so he couldn't see me.

I remember

staring straight ahead

into the world my father saw;

I was learning

to absorb its emptiness,

the heavy snow

not falling, whirling around us.

 

 

          -- from "Ararat" (1990)

 

 

 

 

Louise Glück, "Poems 1962 - 2012" (2012)