Poems
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Chuckin’ corn
1Here I am—
Sitting on a rocking chair
Out there on the front porch
Of a Southern home
Wrenching off the green leaves
And then the long bristling hair
Of an ear of corn
It had looked like
A precious thing wrapped
In some Egyptian handwritten papyrus rolls
Maybe some oval yellow Rosetta stone
That could not be deciphered in the open
By anybody but myself —for once.
When plucking the leaves out,
The ear looked like
Some disheveled creature
With tousled straight hair
As if somehow the Divine had dwelt
Within the plant and had animated it,
Instilling Life and Breath into it.
On the porch, there I was
Listening to what the ear of corn
Had to reveal
And pouring my story
Into it,
And like a dulcimer playing
In front of me,
The ear had me listen
To the past of America.
I could hear native American drums
Along with Aztecan trumpets
Echoing those of the Mariachis
Playing on barges
Sailing on a Mexican lake …
I went that far—
Never leaving the rocking-chair
Or the front porch in Candia Lane,
North Carolina—
And I knew then that souls
Could travel faster than minds,
Disclosing hidden worlds
That could not be shuffled in
By anybody —if they didn’t press
Their own ears to the ones
Nature makes of corn …
Potomac’s visitation
2It was one dark Dutch Pennsylvanian Fall night,
When, like Hamlet, a strange ghost I heard,
Uttering his native tongue with power and might,
Delivering an undeciphered message like a bird.
That song rang deeply through my mind for days,
As the memory of that Indian chief tribe’s face,
Circled with a dim blue halo of feathered haze
Had pierced through my heart in the first place.
Chief Potomac had come over from the Afterlife Kingdom,
To share with me his spiritual knowledge and surreal wisdom,
And disclose the well-kept secret hoard of his tribe
To me, in words of sleepy subtle shadow and glowing pride.
What Potomac had really meant to reveal
As he intrusively visited me in a dream
Like a Danish spirit, I shall never break its seal,
A hoard of words to covet in a sunbeam,
Like a pirate I felt, for that treasure I could steal.
That night, he taught me the godly power of vision,
The fragile nightly path to the Doors of Perception,
That open up to minds accustomed to the sound of drums,
And flimsy souls flying unnoticed past your eardrums.
He let me hear from afar the terrifying howling of wolves,
And the swift running of thousands of wild horses’ hooves,
The eerie and gloomy hooting of hidden boreal owls,
The heavy trampling of buffaloes hunting waterfowls.
That legendary night’s sleep I abruptly ended,
As I saw a blue full moon by twinkling stars surrounded,
And only I awake could hear the eddies and deep whirls
Of the turquoise river flowing near and its voiced whispers ...
Mackintosh’s paintbrushes
3Under the sun of Southern France
Sand-colored pillars stand erect
A wonder of nature defying ignorance
A water-carved landscape with no architect
Skyscrapers made of stone
Standing all aligned
Recreating New York City skylined
On a postcard like a Twilight Zone.
Huge totems devoted to spirits
Or ladders and stairs to Heaven—
Who might be the player hidden
Behind those yellowish keys of grits?
You could almost imagine junipers
Growing at the bottom of such a Canyon,
Following the trail avoided by vipers,
And mistake a buzzard for an eagle,
Wishing a Spanish Archbishop to be your companion,
Perceiving this might be the Valley of Death
Despite the outcry of cheeky seagulls
Reminding you of the nearby sea and its salted breath
As gushes of wind went on rumbling with their struggles.
As you walk round the Fairy Chimneys,
You expect merrows to lift up the stone lids
Of the pillars they live in and act like Pixies,
Playing gentle tricks on humans during their visits
Or Cappadocian pigeons to shoot up
From the troglodytic chimney tops
So many years after being locked up
In their jail of stone in spite of harvests and crops
Almost expecting to see the brave Sultan’s boy
Elope with the Fairy King’s daughter with joy.
Cathedrals of sand, churches of clay,
Beware, passersby, of the eroding wind of the day
And avoid trespassing further than your way,
The Fairies can still cast spells in any possible way
Your suffering would indeed make their day.
As you hike up the hilly trail
Figuring out what kind of dwellers
There might have been —with or without bail
Mackintosh’s paintbrushes
And what sort of giants could have been the players
Of this instrument made of natural pipes,
You realise how akin with their likes
Up in the Northern Irish Causeway
They must have been,
Crossing inlets, striding over lands,
Fighting in any way
Like Baby Finn Mac Cool has been seen,
By Benandonner the Great who fled back to the Scottish islands.
That a Scottish painter
Has fallen in love with this landscape
Is no real wonder
As the memory of a legendary giant’s escape
Must have remained in the nooks and crannies
Of his mind lulled by the voices of nannies
Who taught him of his native land
All the folklore and stories
As an adult he would make his brand -
On those strange desert ancient strands
Charles Rennie decided to stick into the sands -
His watercolor paintbrushes
And let them dry in the sun
Their colored —still— bristles way above the bushes,
Scratching the sky with rainbow hues for fun.
Eye of Sapphire
4Her brownish palms held out,
Enshrining a foreign jewel—
Uncovered a most precious layout—
A golden-lined almond around a deep blue pool.
It sparkled against her dark skin
Bringing a lustre like no other
To her foundation and eye of Djinn—
Two tourmaline blackwomen glowing on silver.
She was being kind and friendly,
Offering me a token of friendship,
An Eastern symbol of amenity,
Which she would always worship.
She didn’t master the language,
And had never learnt it before,
But her gestures conveyed without outrage
All I needed to know about her heartsore.
She languished and missed her home,
The Blue Mosk and Egyptian spice market,
The beaches of the Marmara Sea and its foam,
The colorful carpets and the street racket.
She had eloped to another strange country
With her Christian lover she did not really know,
Bringing only with her a trinket – blue and shiny,
She had hidden in her exile clothes of woe.
She made sure she would always have it,
Close to her heart, or around her wrist,
As if a Genie could materialize out of it,
Only by rubbing the gem it bore in a twist.
Her home in the Western world
Was a deep Bosphorus blue wealth,
As if it were the real river itself—
Where you could drown smiling
Feeling the dizziness of Sufi whirling—
And could dance up and down the staircase whorled.
What she treasured from Istanbul
Were her memories, above all,
Eye of Sapphire
Ruminating over them like a fool,
She had no other remains, after all.
So, one day she bequeathed her jewel
To me – her only luggage and remedy,
That had soothed her melancholy,
And made her feel abroad more comfortable.
And I held this precious little gems with my fingers,
Reading the story of her uprooting through and through,
Each facet of the stone symbolizing all the borders
She had crossed, riding camels and horses that flew
Over land and sea,
So she could be here with me,
And cast her beloved eye on me,
An Eye of Sapphire,
A charm from Turkey,
A spell against evil,
A curse for the Devil,
An eye so lucky
A stake through the heart of a vampire ...
5At the request of the DETOURS editors, Sophie Doulut added this postscript: The poetry that fills my mind is very much inspired by the mundane and by the experiences and emotions that have shaped my life. I regard myself as a traveller of the Earth and foreign countries have always excited my imagination. I am a poet from here and everywhere, and from nowhere but the Universe. Interested in miniatures and details, I can see the World in every tiny thing that crosses my path and I believe the Sacred is hidden within us and around us at all times. I tend to write narrative poems, probably because of Beowulf or medieval lays that I love to read. My poetic world is that of metamorphoses and magic, a fairy-talish combination of lives of Saints and fascination for Celtic mythology. I dedicate these first published poems to my mother, Monique Vialatte-Doulut—whose penname was Janus—former President of Les Amis de la Poésie in Bergerac, Dordogne, who was awarded the Arts and Letters of France bronze medal for poetry, and former editor of the poetry review she founded and called La Toison d’Or. I would like to send all my warm thanks to Alice Braun, who puts my poetry online on the LOOP website very regularly and to all the LOOP members who believed in the potential of my craft.
References
Electronic reference
Sophie Doulut, “Poems”, Caliban [Online], 71-72 | 2024, Online since 20 August 2024, connection on 15 May 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/12861; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/12dmn
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