[좋은 영시71]Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard

 

 

 

Oct., 2009

필리핀의 리잘 주에 위치한 타이타이 마을에서

태풍 루피트 피해로 학교 운동장에 물난리가 나자

어린 학생들이 걸상을 딛고 운동장을 건너고 있다.

 (Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

 

 

 

Children Walk on Chairs

to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard

 

by Patrick Rosal

 

Taytay, Rizal Province, Philippines
(based on the photo by Noel Celis)

 

물난리가 난 운동장을

걸상 위로 건너는 어린이들

 

패트릭 로잘

(필리핀, 로잘주, 타이타이에서

노을 첼리스씨가 찍은 사진을 보고)

 

 

Hardly anything holds the children up, each poised
mid-air, barely the ball of one small foot
kissing the chair's wood, so
they don't just step across, but pause
above the water.

I look at that cotton mangle
of a sky, post-typhoon, and presume
it's holding something back. In this country,
it's the season of greedy gods
and the several hundred cathedrals
worth of water they spill onto little tropic villages
like this one, where a girl is likely to know
the name of the man who built
every chair in her school by hand,
six of which are now arranged
into a makeshift bridge so that she and her mates
can cross their flooded schoolyard.

 

Boys in royal blue shorts and red rain boots,
the girls brown and bare-toed
in starch white shirts and pleated skirts.
They hover like bells that can choose
to withhold their one clear, true
bronze note, until all this nonsense
of wind and drizzle dies down.

 

One boy even reaches forward
into the dark sudden pool below
toward someone we can't see, and
at the same time, without looking, seems
to offer the tips of his fingers back to the smaller girl 
behind him. I want the children
ferried quickly across so they can get back
to slapping one another on the neck
and cheating each other at checkers.

 

I've said time and time again I don't believe
in mystery, and then I'm reminded what it's like
to be in America, to kneel beside
a six-year-old, to slide my left hand
beneath his back and my right under his knees, 
and then carry him up a long flight of stairs
to his bed. I can feel the fine bones,
the little ridges of the spine
with my palm, the tiny smooth stone
of the elbow. I remember I've lifted
a sleeping body so slight I thought
the whole catastrophic world could fall away.

 

I forget how disaster works, how it can turn
a child back into glistening butterfish
or finches. And then they'll just do
what they do, which is teach the rest of us
how to move with such natural gravity.

 

Look at these two girls, center frame,
who hold out their arms
as if they're finally remembering
they were made for other altitudes.
I love them for the peculiar joy
of returning to earth. Not an ounce
of impatience. This simple thrillof touching ground.

 

 

 

패트릭 로잘은 현재 미국 필라델피아에서 거주하며

뉴져지 캠든에 위치한 러트거스 대학에서 교수로 재직중인 시인이다.

 

 

 

매일 5-6편의 시를 읽는 습관이 꽤 오래 되었는데,

이 시의 제목을 읽자마자

6년 전에 신문에서  이 시의 배경이 된 사진을 접한 것이

어제처럼 또렷이 기억이 나서

설레이는 마음으로 끝까지 읽어 내려갔습니다.

 

간단한 언어로 편하게 쓰여진 시에서

시인이 마지막 구절에 언급한 것처럼

나 역시 시를 읽는 자체가

simple thrill 로 다가옴을 오랜만에 느껴져서

대충 느낌을 살려 한글로 번역해서

포스팅을 했습니다.

 

우리가 살면서 

사소하고 평범한 것에서

기쁨과 위안을 얻기 위해서

마음의 눈을 열고

따스한 눈길로 

이 세상을 바라 보면 좋겠습니다.