Vasko Popa (조영필 역)
석영 자갈의 사랑
그는 반했네 한 아름다운
동그란 파란 눈을 가진
경박한 끝이 없음에
그는 확 변모해 버렸네
그녀 눈의 흰자위로
그녀만이 그를 이해하네
그녀의 포옹만이
무언의 경계없는
그의 욕망의 형태를 가지고 있네
그녀의 모든 그림자를
그는 자신 속에 포착했네
그는 사랑에 눈이 멀어
어떤 다른 미인도
보지 못하네 그녀 말고는
그가 사랑하여
그의 머리로 값을 치룰
The Love of the Quartz Pebble
He fell for a beautiful
A rounded blue-eyed
A frivolous endlessness
He is quite transformed
Into the white of her eye
Only she understands him
Only her embrace has
The shape of his desire
Dumb and boundless
All her shadows
He has captured in himself
He is blind in his love
And he sees
No other beauty
But her whom he loves
And who will cost him his head
(Vasko Popa Selected Poems, translated by Anne Pennington, Penguin Books, 1969)
Love of the Pebble
It stares into the beautiful
Round blue-eyed
Featherbrained eternity
It has turned itself
Into the white of her eye
Only she understands it
Her embrace has
The shape of its desire
Dumb and bottomless
All her shadows
It has captured in itself
Blindly in love
So that no other beauty
It notices
Except this one for which
It pays for by its head
(Homage to the lame wolf, translated by Charles Simic, Oberlin College Press, 1987)
Note:
'cost him his head': doci (mu) glave (literally 'come for his head') is a highly colloquial expression, akin to the English 'do him in'.