Esther
2023년 12월 16일
The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver는 몇 년 전 Krista Tippett의 On Being을 통해서 처음 접했습니다.
그 땐 그녀가 누군지 잘 몰랐지만 인터뷰 중 “Attention is the beginning of devotion”라고 했던 그녀의 말에서 Simone Weil의 “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”와 비슷한 울림을 느꼈습니다.
<Devotions>은 그녀의 2015년에 발간된 시집부터 시작해 1963년의 시집까지 시간을 거슬러 오르며 읽게 되어있는 시 모음집입니다. 약 50년에 걸친 그녀의 전 생애 작품들을 단 몇 일만에 읽어버리면서, 이것은 이렇게 읽으면 안된다는 생각과 함께 시인에게 좀 죄송한 마음이 들었습니다.
그녀의 시들은 주의를 좀 기울이면 누구에게나 보이는 주어진 것들을 다시 보고, 그 아름다움에 날마다 새롭게 경탄할 수 있는 시각을 보여줍니다. 주의를 기울인다는 것은 매일의 연습을 통해 배워나갈 수 있는 자세인 듯 합니다. 그런 어텐션의 퀄리티에 따라 심지어는 보이는 것의 성질, 인식의 내용이 달라지기도 하지요.
그 어떤 것도 단지 그 자체로만 존재하는 것이 아니라, 잘 보면 그 이상으로의 의미와 용도, 아름다움을 발견할 수 있습니다. 사실 용도와 기능을 보자면 굳이 우리에게 아름다워 보이지 않아도 되는 자연임에도 불구하고 그저 아름다운 것은 우리의 그 어떤 경제원리에도 적용할 수 없는 선물입니다.
그녀의 시들은 바짝 마르고 앙상하게 남아 마치 죽어있는 듯 하지만 봄이 되면 그 생명력을 드러내는 것들이 있는가 하면, 겉으로는 살아있는 것처럼 보이나 사실은 죽어있는 것들을 생각해보게 합니다. 또 무릇 아무것도 할 수 없는 것 같을 때, 그저 즐거움으로 존재하는 것 같은 백합과 참새를 상기시키는 시들입니다. 그 중에서도 다음의 시들이 가장 잘 알려져 있는 듯 합니다:
I Go Down to the Shore (2012)
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall -
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
Wild Geese (1986)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The Journey (1963)
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do,
determined to save
the only life you could save.
The Summer Day (1990)
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?