THE RETURN OF JEAN FOLLAIN ~

 

Deep in the Back

Deep in the back

of the vast attic

where rats feed on poisoned wheat

a ray of sun lights up

the enormous pile of gazettes

out of which comes the musty odor

of a faded century

in the sky soon every light will go out.

Something

Called stone eater

a tiny worm consumes the slate

in which it hides

minute by minute time is

tightening its screws

shaken jewelry makes its sound

ants reside in a ruin

something

is always happening.

Edge of the Hearth

The outbuildings with no real use

are left to the rains

a peasant woman

has an edge of the black hearth

for a seat

the evening turns

in swirls of her breath

the wind in the hollow tree

why beings and things

she thinks

and not nothing.

Village Square

In the village square

at the foot of the church

one of the drinkers puts on

the kepi of his soldier friend as a joke

above them the hour strikes so loudly

they flinch

a horse that is unhitched

when it stamps the soft earth

radiates an abundant calm

they say to get there

leave before nightfall.

Quiet

There is that moment

of hearing water flowing underground

across the clay.

Quiet

the man says to the boy

holding his watch up to his ear

satisfied it ticks so well

in the middle of a tainted century.

A Night

Organ function to breaking down

the hand stays pressed

to the craggy wall

then the body with neither hearth nor home

continues on through a cold night

and starts forging words

to speak in the coming daylight.

___________________________

Earthly

translated  by Andrew Seguin

The Song Cave, 2025

RONALD JOHNSON AGAIN ~

 

Wild Apples

                                                        with 'bow-arrow tang'

cows or birds or Johnny Appleseed

planted

New England westward

Whole orchards, boughs knotted

with fruits of coral & gold — to be eaten, Thoreau believed,

in the wind.              

                    Whose 'bloom' rubs off in pockets

like wild horses

broken in, harnessed

to plow.

                    Neither orchards of the east, in lichened

                    walls, or west

                    hedged in eucalyptus—

bounded only by slopes of oak

& of maple,

the woods-apple comes sweet from the hills, both spring

nights & autumn

a wildflower sharpness, an earthy

cider

                    Domestics

                    shape

                    for hand,

                    & tint

                    of 'apple

                    color'

                            —but wild may brindle

                    as a cow,

                    may rust like

                    rock

____________________________

Valley of the

Many-Colored Grasses

The Song Cave, 2023

                    

GEORGE WHITMORE, NEBRASKA ~

 

R E A D   M E

The Song Cave

2025

JEAN FOLLAIN ~

Day on Fire

The door shined in fiery daylight

but the braids of the women there

held still

one of them leaned over the waters on the cauldron

and on a piece of porcelain

a painted bird had worn itself out with singing.

The messenger was seen to come in

with a letter and a golden loaf in his hands

he spoke

then it was dead silence

and the whole garden gave up its scent.

Landscape with Two Laborers

The countyside was calm

a girl was washing her unblemished leg

and the hours

etched themselves into the cloth they faded

attacking the damask flowers.

The pages of a schoolbook

had been carried off by the wind

up above the eglantines

and down the length of the path

to ditches filled with clever beasts

to embankments covered in those herbs

favored for soothing teas

two laborers took their time

telling each other

the secrets of working with wood.

The Notice

The child pushing along the ring of a barrel

as his makeshift hoop

runs alone and shouts

but to the one who has just spelled out

beneath the N and the eagle of Empire

the draft notice

the old man says simply

in the blazing sun

while drinking a foamy pear cider:

"the next century will be worse"

though lovers go by singing.

Edge of the Hearth

The outbuildings with no real use

are left to the rains

a peasant woman

has an edge of the black hearth

for a seat

the evening turns

in swirls of her breath

the wind in the hollow tree

why beings and things

she thinks

and not nothing

_______________________________

Jean Follain

Earthly

The Song Cave 2025

translated by Andrew Seguin

JUMP CUTS ~

 

R E A D   M E

One of the best titles from this

intermittent intriguing press ~

the poetry titles are on the weaker side

the re-issues are invaluable

the prose titles robust

SCARDANELLI (MAYROCKER) ~

 

T H E    S O N G     C A V E

MENG JIAO ~

 

Why Complain

Bad poetry gets you good posts.

Good poetry

Gets you to a mountain.

Hugging the mountain

You shiver

Daylong you hug it

For cold

With a dour face.

Some position, that.

Poetry,

Good for nothing, you think,

— It courts envy.

Daggers drawn soon point at your clenched teeth,

The good & the great are long dead.

You chew over their work.  Best dead.

For what it's worth.

& shall I not, now nearing the end of life,

Have some peace of mind —

A person of few words

Who has withstood his time?

The pack descended,

Glowering

You are wanted.

______________________

In the Same Light

200 Poems for Our Century

translated by Wang May

The Song Cave, 2022

HAN SHAN ~

 

Cold Mountain Poems

1.

These days

    Men who saw Cold Mountain

In person

Thought him crazy.

    

    Unseemly,

        The face apart,

Body in rags & things

    Like you shouldn't notice.

What I said

He didn't hear.

What he said

I won't repeat.

Yet

    Go on, I tell

    Those to come

All ye

Go on

To the Cold Mountain.

2.

Out of clothes? Go find yours.

Don't get a fox to take off his coat.

Wanting food? Pick our own.

Don't trick a goat into providing for you.

To ask for a loan of the pelt

& flesh as well

Is to hold with their sadness & misery,

regrets all around.

The force for good is gone

From the world.

Food & clothing not where they should be.

3.

The poor donkey is short one measure

Of fodder,

The rich dog has three inches of bed straw to spare.

If poverty is not evenly distributed

Wealth and hardship will not meet in the middle.

Just when you begin to provide for the donkey

You make the dogs feel deprived.

Think on this, will you —

It even makes me feel depressed.

4.

Heaven is high, endless.

The earth thick

    Thick without end.

Living in between

At the mercy of these powers,

Creatures

    Butting heads

For food & warmth,

Eyeing each other's morsels

Would scheme to kill

        Heedless

        The while.

Why should

A blind child

Wonder about the color of milk?

5.

I saw dogs, by the hundreds

A wild bunch,

                        Scruffy curs,

The reclining ones happy to lie low

The ones up & about are happy too,

Throw a bone in their midst

& all changes

Everyone begins to growl,

Baring their teeth at each other

Alas, not that there were too few bones

But there were so many dogs

How to share it out?

6.

Pity the mortals

Their feeling habit

Eating at every meal

    Never tire

Steamed pork, stir in the garlic paste

Broiled duck

Dip in peppered salt

For a delicate fish broth

Pull out the backbone of a fish

                For tenderness

                Serve the cheek warm

    Its skin on

    The bitterness of other things

    Others can keep

We get on with

What is sweet

7.

Children, I tell you,

Leave the burning house now

Three carts are at the door,

        One to flee the self,

                One to save another,

        & one more for the way.

Come away,

Children, everyone.

Homeless you shall not be

Abiding by your vehicle.

& if perchance carried alive to

                The marketplace

There left to sit empty,

Before

            The big sky

You will learn

The ten directions

Have no ups

Nor downs,

Coming or going,

East

Or west, neither

Should prevent you.

8.

People ask the way

To Cold Mountain.

No

Road goes there.

In summer

The ice

Will not shift.

In daylight

Mist

Is all one sees

& how did you

Get there?

How did I?

But your heart is hardly

Like mine,

When it is

There is here.

_________________________

In the Same Light

200 Poems for Our Century

translated by Wong May

The Song Cave, 2022

    

  

RONALD JOHNSON ~

 

Three Painting by Arthur Dove

I. PLANT FORMS

Dove once pulled up a cyclamen

& tore it up

to show

how the color went

down inthe stem

& on into the root.

Color is a condition of the plant —

color of the flower,

& pod,

embedded in the bud.

At the perimeters of growth

the plant

has lines of force —

as the 'wind

has weight.'

If we could look at an orange flower long enough

it would become blue:

spathe, sheath,

petiole, blade,

stalk, & root —

'these moving circles, in which we walk'.

II. COWS IN PASTURE

What is wanted

is someone who can open the chestnut-burr

with his bare heel,

& bark, hide, the bull-calf eye,

as forms.

Once open, form is wind, 'water in an old hoof-print'.

but most branch an eye,

the bull's or buck-eye,

as if —

it grew bark.  Give it hair, turf,

willow.

'Raw sienna, black & green'.

Form has no

size.

The burnt-out log

is not a whale.

Nor is it

'silver burnt brown

wood

color dark'.

And there are no cows.

We walk,

careful not to step on snails.

The grass is very

green.

That the mountainside

looks like a face

is accidental'.

III. MOON

It is, of course, as great as any

Ryder.

The sensation of sound

as if someone

had hit a tree with a club,

fog-horns, the Ferry Boat Wreck—Oyster Bay,

& all his

Dawns, Moons, Suns,

are a new form, 'boundaries of other

events'

such as cross-section

of sequoia,

scales of haddock, agate,

are. 

'On the levels of the very large, the very small, the very slow,

the eye sees as constant, & at rest,

what our memory assures us to be fluid & moving'.

The moon is on a tree-trunk

& there are rings of growth & brightness.

At the heart of this

light

it is dark.

This is a man who has looked at a moon in the face, night

& day

dove, dove.

A New Edition (with a Ralph Eugene Meatyard cover photograph)

 — many of us own the original Norton copy —

Ronald Johnson

VALLEY OF THE MANY-COLORED GRASSES

The Song Cave, 2023