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4. The Exposed Nest / Mountain Interval(1916) - Robert Frost
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
wilt : 시들다
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
June-grass : 켄터기 불루그래스, 왕포아풀
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter bar had just gone champing over
clamp : 을 우두둑 우두둑 씹다
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
interpose : 방해하다, 끼위놓다
And too much world at once―could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene,
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory―have you?―
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
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노출된 둥지
당신은 늘 새로운 놀이를 찾곤 했지요.
그래서 당신이 목장에서 팔과 무릎을 꿇고
내가 생각하기에, 방금 벤 건초를 열심히 매만지며,
그것을 세로로 세우려고 애쓰는 것을 보고,
나는, 그게 당신의 생각이라면, 바람이 불어도,
그게 쓰러지지 않게 세우는 방법을 직접 보여주고,
또 당신이 부탁하면, 그게 다시 뿌리를 내리고
새로 자라도록 도와줄 수 있는 척하려고 했지요.
그러나 오늘은 그게 당신의 놀이도 아니었고,
풀 자체가 당신의 진짜 관심사도 아니었어요.
당신은 시든 고사리, 반들반들한 왕포아풀,
검은 토끼풀 대가리들을 한줌 들고 있었는데,
그것은 예초기 칼날이 방금 우둑우둑 씹고
(기적적으로 고기 맛은 보지 않고) 지나면서
열과 빛에 무방비로 팽개친 새끼 새들이
가득 우글거리는 땅 위의 둥지였어요.
새들의 시력과 너무 눈부신 갑작스런 세계를
중재할 어떤 보호막에 대한 새들의 권리를,
그 방법이 있다면. 회복하고자 당신은 애를 썼지요,
우리가 움직일 때마다 둥우리 가득한 새끼들이
우리를 향해 일어서는 모습이
귀가(歸家)가 너무 지연된 어미 새를 반기는 것 같았기에,
엄청나게 바뀐 이런 상황에서 어미 새가 돌아와
새끼들을 돌볼 것인지, 행여 우리의 간섭으로
어미 새가 더욱 두려워하지 않을까 자문(自問)했다.
이 문제는 우리가 기다렸다 확인할 수 없는 것이었다.
우리는 좋은 일을 할 때 수반되는 위험을 깨달았지만,
해가 발생하더라도 우리는 할 수 있는 최선을 차마
그만두지 못했다. 그래서 우리는 당신이 시작한
가리개를 만들었고, 다시 그들에게 그늘을 제공했다.
이 모두가 우리의 사랑을 증명하려는 것이었다.
그런데 왜 더 이상 할 말이 없는가?
우리는 다른 일로 돌아갔던 것이다.
나는 그곳에 다시 돌아와서 새들이 첫 날 밤을
무사히 살아남고, 마침내 날개 쓰는 법을 배웠는지
살펴본 기억이 전혀 없다―당신은 있어?―
-신재실 옮김-
단상(斷想): 농부 부부가 예초기로 풀을 깎는다. 남편이 앞에서 풀을 깎으면 아내는 뒤에서 가지런히 정돈한다. 따라오던 아내가 저만치 처진다. 남편은 뒤를 돌아본다. 아내가 무릎을 꿇고 앉아서 무엇인가를 열심히 하고 있다. 쓰러진 풀을 세워보려는 건가? 내가 가서 가르쳐줘야지. 가서 보니 오늘은 아내가 놀이를 하는 게 아니다. 아내의 손에는 풀이 한줌 쥐어져 있고, 그 아래를 보니 노출된 둥지에 새끼 새들이 우글거린다. 예초기 칼날에 둥지의 덮개가 사라지고, 새끼 새들의 연약한 눈이 강한 햇빛의 공격을 받는다.
원상복구가 필요한 상황이다. 아내는 위험에 노출된 새들을 보호하려고 애쓰는 중이었다. 남편은 엄청난 상황 변화에 어미 새가 둥지를 찾지 못할까봐 걱정이다. 새끼들이 사람 손에 부정(不淨)을 타면 어미 새가 새끼들을 버린다는 말도 있지 않은가? 선을 행하려는 아내의 노력이 오히려 해를 가져오면 어쩌나? 공연한 간섭을 하기보다는 자연의 자생력에 맡기는 것이 낫지 않을까?
하지만 그는 아내를 도와 풀 덮개를 복구한다. 새들에 대한 연민의 정을 차마 외면할 수 없었다. 과연 새들은 살아남을까? 그 뒤에 어찌 됐는지 그는 기억이 없다. 남편은 아내에게 “당신은 있어?”라고 묻는다. 뻔히 알고 묻는 남편의 물음에서 현장에 되돌아 올 겨를 없이 마냥 달려야 하는 실존의 조건에 대한 유감이 짙게 묻어난다.
-신재실 씀-
출처 : http://blog.naver.com/PostList.nhn?from=postList&blogId=js9660&categoryNo=31¤tPage=57
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“Exposed Nest, The” (1916)
The poem begins in fancy. The speaker is address
ing someone, likely a child, since he or she is “for
ever finding some new play” and is down on “hands
and knees in the meadow.” The beginning is whim
sical, and the use of the second person “you” is
inviting to the reader.
At first the speaker thinks the child is attempt
ing to set upright the new-mown hay. This image,
while not as stark as what is to come, reveals a cer
tain sadness. It points to a child’s desire to make
things right. She wants somehow to resurrect the
hay that has been so violently cut down by the
hayer.
Witnessing the scene while approaching, the
speaker plans to go along with the “play,” willing to
“pretend” as he might at a child’s tea party, but he
soon learns that there is no such frivolous “make
believe” for today. The fanciful beginning of the
poem comes to an abrupt end. The turnabout
hinges on something quite common, something to
which Frost and his children would have been fre
quently exposed in their farming lives: destruction
in nature. But that destruction is not a natural one,
for it is dealt by the haying machine that very nearly
brought death to a “nest full of young birds.” The
machine did not kill the birds but left the nest
exposed, the birds vulnerable.
The child, hands full of “wilted fern, / Steel
bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover,”
perhaps collected for a new nest, looks down hope
fully on the young birds. The description of the
machine is of one that “had just gone champing
over”—the very word champing underscoring its
cruel indifference and the destruction that not only
nature but technology can sometimes bring. The
child is soulful: She wants to make the birds right
again, as one can in make-believe.
Frost’s philosophical side interrupts the agrarian
image, as his philosophy so often does when he
describes natural scenes. He imagines that the child
is attempting to “restore them to their right / Of
something interposed between their sight / And too
much world at once—could means be found.” The
birds’ plight is considered “too much world at
once,” both for the young birds and for the child,
and Frost’s meaning stuns quickly but gently. The
world is filled with hurt, and it must therefore be
taken in slowly, a bit at a time. This echoes Emily
Dickinson’s lines in “Tell all the Truth but tell it
slant—,” where she writes, “The truth’s superb sur
prise / As lightning to the Children eased / With
explanation kind / The Truth must dazzle gradually
/ Or every man be blind—.”
The speaker, or perhaps parent, and child imag
ine that aiding the baby birds may be too much of a
“risk . . . in doing good.” But the child, with hands
full of clover and June-grass, continues to “buil[d]
the screen / [She] had begun, and g[i]ve them back
their shade” in an attempt to offer some protection
to the birds. At that point, the responsibility of the
speaker and child is lifted. They are done with this
scene. “All this to prove we cared,” the speaker
says. The scene plays out as destruction often does:
first shock and surprise, then memories, then an
attempt to make things right, somehow, with a
return to life for those, not directly harmed, who
are left behind.
There are several haunting messages embedded
in the poem. First, there is the notion of “too much
world at once.” Then comes the idea that all of the
gestures of kindness are to “prove” that one cares—
as if it were something to be proved. The kindness
is somehow lessened by such a judgment. Finally,
after having demonstrated “care,” even when there
is nothing that can be done, the characters “tur[n]
to other things.” The poet wonders, half-heartedly,
why there is “no more to tell” and why he does not
have “any memory” of the scene after setting the
birds to rest, or perhaps even to die, beneath the
shade. As in “Out Out—,” where the poet writes,
“No more to build on there. And they, since they /
were not the one dead, turned to their affairs,” or
in “Home Burial,” where he writes, “Friends make
pretense of following to the grave, / But before one
is in it, their minds are turned / And making the
best of their way back to life,” once the desire to
show care has passed, people turn back to life, as
they must.
The closing three lines of the poem admit that
speaker and child never returned to the meadow to
check on the birds, to see if they made it through
that night, or any other, or to see if they ever
learned to use their wings and fly.
The poem is an account of a frequent occurrence
in country life, but it is not just an account. Nature
usually leads Frost to some other sort of meditation,
causing him to reflect on the condition, or the
plight, of many things. In “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
he leaps from the turning of a leaf from green to
gold to Eden sinking to grief. But while nature is
beyond good and evil—in nature things simply hap
pen, for good or ill—in this poem the nest is exposed
not by nature itself but by the human beings who till
its soil. Nature, if left alone, might have been able to
bring the birds to flight, but our forcible intrusions
are matters to be reckoned with.
Here that reckoning, that brush with death,
leads to doubts about larger, human questions. It
also leads to the need for humans, in the face of
destruction, to offer some demonstration of sympa
thy, even if momentarily, before returning to their
own affairs.
The poem was originally published in Mountain
Interval.
FURTHER READING
Marcus, Mordecai. The Poems of Robert Frost: An
Explication. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991.