Jean Follain: Fox

Through our nights sometimes a fox roams
who across the drowsing earth
seeks out a hazardous living
grazing the sweet leaf
and from a long dream of rapine
and of childhood and of shame
filled through with mysteries of warm bread
and the live fire of cottages
we wake throats dry.


Tr. Bernard Waldrop. Follain (1903-1971) was a dream-laden miniaturist. In this poem the identification of fox with dream—or, perhaps, the transmutation of fox into dream—is complete.