벤벌빈BenBulben 산 아래 영원히 잠든 W. B. Yeats

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by.

대머리 Ben Bulben 벤벌빈을 굳이 골라 영원의 안식처로 삼으려 한 이유가 있으리라. (Ben Bulben은 Benbulben이라 붙여쓰기도 하던데, 예이츠는 띄어썼다. 철자대로 읽으면 벤불벤인데, 벤벌빈 정도로 읽는 듯하고, 실제 현행 외래어 표기법도 그런 듯하다.) 

동시대 같은 아일랜드 호흡한 오스카 와일드며 버나드 쇼며 제임스 조이스며, 그보다 반세기 뒤쳐져 혜성처럼 등장한 사무엘 베게트가 갖추지 못한 유일함이 벤 불벤이 대표하는 산이었다.

저 벤벌빈 산 아래 William Butler Yeats가 잠들었다.

그냥 차가운 눈길 한 번 던지곤 지나치라 했지만

나는 말 탄 사람 아닌 차를 모는 까닭에

또 내가 그 심정 조금은 아는 듯 하기에 씩 웃어주고 묘지명 한 번 보듬는다.


Under Ben Bulben

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I
Swear by what the Sages spoke   
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,   
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
Swear by those horsemen, by those women,   
Complexion and form prove superhuman,   
That pale, long visaged company
That airs an immortality
Completeness of their passions won;   
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here's the gist of what they mean.   

II
Many times man lives and dies   
Between his two eternities,   
That of race and that of soul,   
And ancient Ireland knew it all.   
Whether man dies in his bed   
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear   
Is the worst man has to fear.   
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,   
Sharp their spades, their muscle strong,   
They but thrust their buried men   
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel's prayer have heard   
`Send war in our time, O Lord!'   
Know that when all words are said   
And a man is fighting mad,   
Something drops from eyes long blind   
He completes his partial mind,   
For an instant stands at ease,   
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace,   
Even the wisest man grows tense   
With some sort of violence   
Before he can accomplish fate   
Know his work or choose his mate.

IV
Poet and sculptor do the work   
Nor let the modish painter shirk   
What his great forefathers did,   
Bring the soul of man to God,   
Make him fill the cradles right.
Measurement began our might:   
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,   
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.
Michael Angelo left a proof   
On the Sistine Chapel roof,   
Where but half-awakened Adam   
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam   
Till her bowels are in heat,   
Proof that there's a purpose set   
Before the secret working mind:   
Profane perfection of mankind.
Quattrocento put in paint,
On backgrounds for a God or Saint,   
Gardens where a soul's at ease;   
Where everything that meets the eye
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky   
Resemble forms that are, or seem   
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,   
And when it's vanished still declare,   
With only bed and bedstead there,   
That Heavens had opened.

                                        Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone   
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude   
Prepared a rest for the people of God,   
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.

V
Irish poets learn your trade   
Sing whatever is well made,   
Scorn the sort now growing up   
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads   
Base-born products of base beds.   
Sing the peasantry, and then   
Hard-riding country gentlemen,   
The holiness of monks, and after   
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;   
Sing the lords and ladies gay   
That were beaten into the clay   
Through seven heroic centuries;   
Cast your mind on other days   
That we in coming days may be   
Still the indomitable Irishry.

VI
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,   
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,   
On limestone quarried near the spot   
By his command these words are cut:

               Cast a cold eye   
               On life, on death.   
               Horseman, pass by!


VI
민둥산 벤 벌빈 아래 
드럼클리프 교회 마당에 예이츠가 잠들었노라    
선조 한 분은 그곳 교구 목사셨으니 
오래전 일이다. 교회 하나가 근처에 섰으니
길 옆엔 오래된 십자가 하나가 있네 
대리석도 없고 판에 박힌 문구도 없이    
그곳에서 가까운 데서 캐낸 대리석엔    
그의 명에 따라 이런 글을 새겼노라  

               차가운 눈길을 던져라   
               삶에다가, 죽음에다가    
               말탄 자여, 지나가라