Where are you lying
secret of the world
with so strong an odor?
Sometimes a gentle workman
in the feverish town
falls from a scaffolding
and the wind always smells of lilac;
a tenacious misfortune
lodges in the loveliest bodies
hands tighten in the evening
an animal sleeps
within walls rough by men
peace forever decays
and war no longer
has an age.
Death
From the bones of animals
the factory had made these buttons
which fastened
a bodice over the bust
of a gorgeous working-girl
when she fell
one of the buttons came off in the night
and the water of the gutters took it
and laid it down
in a private garden
with a crumbling plaster statue
Pomona
naked and laughing
Life
A child is born
in a vast landscape
half a century later
he is simply a dead soldier
and that was the man
whom one saw appear
and set down on the ground a whole
heavy sack of apples
two or three of which rolled
a sound among the sounds of a world
where the bird sang
on the stone of the door-sill.
————————————
JEAN FOLLAIN
W.S. MERWIN (translator)
Transparence of the World
Atheneum 1969
what a book to discover back then, as now!
