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Gael Turnbull

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Homage to Jean Follain

I think you must have written them on postcards, your
     poems, like something one sends home while visiting
     abroad;

or like woodcuts that one finds in an old book in the
     attic and stares at on a rainy day, forgetting supper,
     forgetting to switch on the light;

but not antique, though out of time, each fixed in its
     moment, like sycamore seeds spiralling down that
     never seem to reach the grass.

What became of the freak, the girl with animal fur,
     when the fair moved on to the next village?

and the old souse, when he got home from the wineshop,
     did he beat his wife or did she beat him? did his
     daughter run away?

and that horseman coming home from a thirty years war,
     did the dogs know him? why should that one bird
     cry to announce him from so far?

and the police, toiling day and night to manacle the
     world, did they finish the last link, or did their
     ink dry up? did their slide-rules crumble?

But you don’t tell us, and perhaps you don’t really
     know, as you drink autumn wine in the evening,
     leaning over the battlements of an imaginary tower,
     watching the unwearied insects hovering in the
     immaculate air.

 

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