The oracle maundered on about a cow.

Jean Rustin, Unknown (2001), oil on canvas

Ordinary People in the Last Days by Jay Macpherson (b.1931)

My mother was taken up to heaven in a pink cloud.
She was talking to a friend on the telephone
When we saw her depart through the ceiling
Still murmuring about bridge.

My father prophesied.
He looked out from behind his newspaper
And said, ‘Johnny-Boy will win the Derby’.
The odds against were fifteen to one, and he won.

The unicorn yielded to my sweetheart.
She was giggling with some girls
When the unicorn walked carefully up to her
And laid his head in her lap.

The white bull ran away with my sister.
My father sent me to find her
But the oracle maundered on about a cow
And I came home disgruntled.

The dove descended on my brother.
He was working in the garden
When the air became too bright for comfort
And the glory of the bird scorched his roses.

A mouse ran away in my wainscot.
I study all day and pray all night.
My God, send me a sign of Thy coming
Or let me die.

My mother was taken up to heaven in a pink cloud,
My father prophesied,
The unicorn yielded to my sweetheart,
The white bull ran away with my sister,
And a mouse ran away in my wainscot.

Felettünk Is Elszállnak Az Évek.

A pious hand is strangling the pity.

Kaj Stenvall, Whose Move (1993), oil on canvas

The Landscape Is behind the Door by Pierre Martory (1920-1998), trans. by John Ashbery

The landscape is behind the door.
The person is there ...New York is full
Of similar places where a world,
A large cloud, is being built. Only
The heads stay put. You pay
Before arriving, a long time before
Opening your mouth. There are things
Near us which all have their green sides.

You wear your eyes and lose them.
A caterpillar makes the difference.
The girl whose face is full of blood
Stops and asks the time.
It's a year that doesn't know its number:
A smile at the bottom of a pocket.
Look! the liar-bird, brother of secrets,
Leaves the familiar creek bed:
The life of others painted on a lampshade.

"I draw you like a salary.
You are my superfluous statue
Hatched beneath hot tears.
I'm digging toward the antipodes.
I unwind the bandages, the horoscope:
It's my body, it's my cocoon, surprised
In a sleep of prolific sand,
That I'm uncovering, like a Cyclops that fainted."

It would be enough to enter, to sit
Near a book, to fold the shadow
To one's knees, to know who
Walks on the bed, who passes the mirror.
Dust tints the linens gray.
Photos choke on night.
Now nothing is visible in the room
Except the inaccessible landscape outdoors.

Down there, the fires of prehistory continue stubbornly
To glow. The lost felucca ferries a skeleton
To its grave. A disc feeds the sky.
In the hollows of geysers dolphins are taking
Advantage of their incognito to cry.
A pious hand is strangling the pity
And slips into the letterbox
The perfumed sadness of silence.

The door papered over with such moments
Doesn't open. the cigarettes unrolled
In smoke (a supplementary beauty)
Leave on the fingers the smell of time past.
Intelligence like a geometer paces
The distance from inside to outside.
Everything is in place, nothing is missing.
Weary of strife the bee on
The windowpane finally renounces the flower.

Tried to forget but it was no use.

Trust me babe, all of the time.

A couple of gems on this 2007 comp compiled by Nick Saloman and released on the Psychic Circle label. With the usual aplomb, we dive into trashy, guitar-heavy rawk, but begin to rise above when Triangle's 'Blow Your Cool' comes on. Deserving of a comp to itself, this little number by the long-defunct French four- or five-piece opens with a couple of simple and clean guitars before bringing in the vocals and horns and drifting into the world pictured in the cover art. Sounds like it was mastered directly from the vinyl, but still rewarding in bits and pieces.

Triangle - Blow Your Cool
The Rattles - Devil's On The Loose
Blue Beard - Sly Willy
Les Variations - Love Me

Torpedo.

Et puis un jour viendra.

Colour me surprised by the work of Sylvie Vartan, a yé-yé girl of no little talent. What I expected to be another French girl belting out typical sixties fare has revealed itself to be a smart, tough little comp of some of Sylive's best sixties moments -- though the highlights are her tracks from 1967, of which there are too few here. Missing too are the three tracks from 1968 produced by Jean-Claude Vannier, 'La Maritza', 'Un p'tit peu beaucoup' and 'Jolie poupée'. But despite this lack, Sylvie's bite and bellow pushes through and what's left is what we came in to hear anyway.

Sylvie Vartan - Ballade pour une sourire
Sylvie Vartan - Le jour qui vient
Sylvie Vartan - Quel effet ça m'a fait