Flower snake - So Chong-Ju

A back road pungent with musk and mint.
So beautiful, that snake. . .
What huge griefs brought you to birth?
Such a repulsive body!

You look like a flowered silk gaiter ribbon!
With your crimson mouth where that eloquent tongue
by which your grandsire beguiled poor Eve
now silently flickers
look, a blue sky. . .  Bite! Bite vengefully!

Run! Quick! That vile head!

Hurling stones, hurling, quickly there
headlong down the musky, grass-sweet road,
pursuing it
not because Eve was our grandsire's wife
yet desperate, gasping
as if after a draft of kerosene. . .  yes, kerosene. . .

If I could only wrap you round me,
fixed on a needle's point;
far more gorgeous than any flowered silk. . .

Those lovely lips, blazing crimson,
as if from sipping Cleopatra's blood. . .  sink in now, snake!

Our young Sunnee's all of twenty, with pretty lips, too,
like those of a cat. . .  sink in now, snake!

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So Chong-Ju (1915 – 2000) South Korea
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
Source: Translations by Brother Anthony