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Sophie Doulut

The Wizard of Santiago

That night he lit up the savage fire
That would purify the sacred beverage
Of the Iberian Celts who lived in another age,
Witnessed by a crowd who called him ‘Sire’.

So convinced was he, that he mastered the dark arts
Of cursing and conjuring, that his voice became hoarse,
And he turned into a strong and powerful bear,
Ready to tear to pieces any evil spirit of the air.

His bewitching eye and winning tongue
Enchanted human hearts before the witches’.
He used his ladle-wand to make wishes,
And bid evil spirits farewell before long.

His incantations reached the woods of Galicia
Where stand in line the ghosts of the Santa Compaña,
Ready to hover over the city and steal your soul,
Unless you hold a cross and the magic formula howl.

And the flames licked the rims of the cauldron,
One thousand tongues surging up from a pit of daemons,
While the Druid was casting his own magic spell,
On a coven of witches and their poppets from hell.

Like Prospero on his island, he gathered a storm,
Within the hearts of the witnesses to his great form,
Reciting his esoteric knowledge that bored its way
Into their bodies as if he vampires had to slay.

With a last curse he ended the ceremony,
That fairies must have been watching with acrimony,
And we cheered our spirits with the water-of-life
He lavished us with, listening to bagpipe and fife.

That supernatural encounter ended
With a lemon zest and some coffee beans,
Mixed with sugar and water – no other means,
A dark pitted night then enfolded.

But we knew
In disguise
The sun would rise
With dawn’s pearls of dew…

Sophie Doulut, May 2025.

Aquae sulis

In the city of thermal waters I received
The message of your presence and existence
Amidst the magnificence of a Royal Crescent well-conceived,
A reminder from beyond – phrased with a lot of patience and no pretence.

I asked for a specific sign – something that could be proof
That another version of the Universe existed,
Like the reflection of the horse-sky galloping on wet sand with its hoofs,
Shows both sides of our vision of the world conceived.

I then heard there the music of my soul
From a soprano’s mouth and chiming through Medusa’s city.
I stood petrified in front of her like a Fool,
Mesmerized in front of such a deity.

The Pump Room nearby was with tourists crowded,
And the smell of sulphur spread everywhere,
As I was experiencing my own Epiphany, alone and alienated,
By the belief that had now struck me with the singer’s glare.

I got the implicit knowledge of your presence in my footsteps,
As Orpheus-like, I walked down into the hall of the Roman baths,
You were my Eurydice, scurrying behind me as we were both holding our breaths,
As the underground waters of Minerva were parted and reeking of eggs, we followed different paths.

As I stood in front of the square pool of green waters,
I felt compelled to contemplate and compare,
The beauty of Roman statues, which looked like Danish Hamlet specters,
Glaring at us from afar and beyond with an unblinking stare.

The whirling and twisting fumes above the shamrock green pool
Call to mind the ancient story of the Lady of the Lake
Whose sword seems to have been taken away in the wake
Of the line of the Roman soldiers who do not play it cool…

Like the strange enchanted bubbling and boiling water
In the Weird Sisters’ bewitched and magical caldron
Something occult is going on in this temple full of ether,
As you, Ghost, keep shadowing me with your chains in wrought iron.

I understood whose mysterious soul you were,
Your name was Sulis, the Goddess of health and fertility,
And these were your sacred waters in your reality,
But the Romans stole it from you, and said Minerva you were.

So you keep haunting the Roman bath-house,
Sending vibrations to any human antenna
That can capture your war message inspired by Boadicea,
And through the limestone water the rippling strength of your inner shouts.

Even from beyond, you remain the spirit and soul
Of the true and genuine Goddess of South-Western England,
And never has a Sulis stone statue stirred sour and foul,
As your energy radiates above the whole British land.

Whatever they call you now,
Sulis or Minerva, or even the Fairy of Springs,
The British people only need to call their vow
Of purity to you so you bestow on them eternal offsprings.

Sophie Doulut, September 2024.

The Inner Volcano

Just like the moody moon wax and wane
That follows the cosmic order of Heraclitean flux,
Anger roots itself deep into abdominal pain,
And surges up like acrid acid reflux…

The lava that spreads up and everywhere
Is the red carpet inner traumas walk on,
Their catwalk is not even aesthetic in the thin air
Of a mind that chokes on boredom and frustration.

The carmin burning rocks of glowing garnet
Swallow like a huge squiggling and coiling red snake
All kinds of plant and animal life-its tail sounding like a hornet,
Rattling like a salamander and behaving like a gentlemanly Rake.

Spurting out its lava
As if it were venom,
You see before your eyes a Lamia,
Springing up like a demon.

Spitting its fire without end,
Dies irae has come again,
And you try that enemy to fend,
As you know you have everything to gain.

It started erupting,
Like a baby’s eructation,
It ended up roaring,
Like an enraged lion.

It started spitting
Its lava of fire
And it overflowed, vomiting
Like the biblical cup in Zion Its red and hilly carpeting,
The colour of dread and desire.

Hades and Persephona underneath
Made so much love they begot
A volcano covered in an ash sheath
That could not frighten a Sicilian bigot.

And that volcano spread vice and evil,
Over the Mediterranean but to no avail,
Its Icelandic cousins had abided Thor’s orders,
By sending turmoil and Death over all borders.

A volcano is the earthly expression of woe,
Its ashes and rains pour down sorrow,
From Northern Europe to the land of Leto –
And your own inner volcano lets out your throe.

Sophie Doulut, December 2024

Chryselephantine glimpse


Never has the deep look of a mere statue
Ever stirred my soul so much before,
Than in Delphi where ivory makes the blue
Of the iris so vivid and true in eyes galore.


Almost frightening, it pierces through my heart
And my mind until it scans my inner self,
Not hiding anything from that scathing art,
Eyes chryselephantine you can’t outsmart.


If some show black obsidian orbs,
Others have colourful quartz globes,
All diamonds in their stone shrines,
And azurean lights on a day that shines.


These gypsum and bronze eyes made me blind,
Dazzling me so much I became a heliophile,
Fishing for the sun in the ocean of lime eyelined,
Blue Eye of Horus sailing on the waters of the Nile.


Twin of the Turkish blue almond of vision,
The Egyptian amulet also brings its share of luck.
Despite its cyclopic shape and solitary equation,
Nazar extends its Izmir magic like a Celtic puck.


Shell white eyes on bronze heads,
Saint Lucy’s inheritance from the sea,
Crumbs of Sicilian and Pita breads,
Scattered islands as far as I can see.


Eyes of mermaids, Eyes of the mind,
Eyes of dolphins, Eyes from Delphi,
The Eyes of Athena’s owl over the city,
Sending their blue hue over to Galaxidi,
Drowning in sea water colour-blind.

Sophie Doulut, March 2025.

Marble City

The Spanish sailors of Segovia and Sevilla
Would scurry to the harbour city of Barcelona
And set off for the New World called America,
Where they would find cities of gold and cornucopia.

What those brave Spaniards ignored at the time
Was that another El Dorado land made of marble
Lay not far from their mild Pyrenean clime,
An enclave still not foreign to Marbella.

As they boarded the three-masted caravels,
They imagined a future full of marvels,
And they expected to find the finest gems,
In the greenest forest of Central America’s fir stems.

Sailing across the Atlantic was full of challenges
Not a bed of roses but of bitter sweet oranges,
Like the ones that shine bright in Andalusia,
Little juicy and colourful suns of Almeria.

The Conquistadores would keep the colours of Sevilla
In mind, never forgetting its fabulous orange trees,
Remembering the fountains and stone-laced galleries
Adorned with the pretty Arabesques of red Alhambra.

With powers unleashed

Some wanted the poet out of his country,
They were fed up with him speaking out,
Telling his truth was the worst crime in history,
Neither a traitor nor a martyr was his bout.

He had let the Regime know
He disagreed and joined a row
With intellectuals who wanted
Freedom and art to be sacred.

He was forced to humiliate himself
In public and he lost his self-esteem
As he was hard-pressed to redeem
His conscience, he wished he was deaf.

Such is the fate of the poet-in-exile,
Who said, wrote, and spoke too much
About politics with which he would never reconcile,
And who used language as a mental crutch.

Poetry became his only solace,
In the strange land where he settled,
And his heart became the only place
Where his country could show its true mettle.

Little did his enemies know
How much they had contributed
To the rise of his literary flow
By unleashing his powers not abducted.

He became greater than them all,
Despite the suffering and homesickness,
They did not lead him to his fall,
His name made history with brightness.

Sophie Doulut, January 2025

Once on a blue corn moon

Not far from Jamestown and Virginia,
When the sun set in a blue halo at night,
You could see glittering fields of gold and might,
Looking like the visions of the North in a Book by Jeremiah.

Instead of finding silver rivers and golden cities,
The field of ingots the Pilgrims could see from afar
Was nothing more than the next crops of corn and bare necessities,
That Native tribes cherished like the North Star.

While the Algonquins were talking to willow trees,
The English settlers were counting the golden coins from their mother country,
And as the tribe chief was listening to the words of winds,
The English were trying to eradicate the languages of North American Amerinds.

The tribes were living in peace with spirits
Until the foreigners set foot on American soil.
They started making nightmares, seeing ghosts and having fits,
Their medicine man himself got sick in that endless turmoil.

Matoaka, or Little Snow Feather, thought she could help-
She had seen the mainsails and the topmast
Advancing above the trees of her native forest at the blast-
The pale faces had shot an Algonquin before he could yelp.

Little Snow Feather would talk to the rivers,
Racoons and Red Cardinals and could never imagine
That she would not wear bear or fox French furs,
But that she would one day die in the land of a royal Virgin.

Sophie Doulut, December 2024.

The vision of the Labradorite

Around the huge bull neck of the tribe chief,
Hung a mirror in which you could see the sky,
And that sent to his mind a vision of clear and cloudy grief,
Hooves, harrowed wagons and houses on fire that made him cry.

The spirits showed him the forthcoming sour and sad scene,
His eyes blinked with rolling pristine and precious pearls of tears,
Which dripped pure and ornate like balls of seers,
Countless crystal stones falling on a vision so obscene,

The Apache chief saw it all and nothing at all,
The invasion of his people’s sacred territory,
By wan faces and blue eyes in the following Fall,
Unspiritual and ignorant creatures of nature’s reality.

He held his Labradorite stone up high,
So the light could ignite its inner landscapes,
Before thunderous clouds could over it fly,
And the images he could see should escape.

He saw the arrows and the guns,
The collapse of his own civilization,
Among scattered scalps lying on dead horses’ rumps,
Sun and Moon at war, fostering a bunch of stars for a new nation.

With the oracular mirror of the sky around his neck,
He could see within his stone only one huge speck,
A raindrop that had clattered on its surface,
The omen of a trail of tears for the people of his race.

Again, he saw the violated and bloody river-crossing,
The border lined with white wooden crosses that was overlooked,
Despite their obvious signs of no trespassing,
And the ensuing sound and fury to which America got hooked.

That wise man shivered and fell to his knees,
There was nothing he could do to avoid the lust of violence
Men on both sides felt rising like sap in their bodies and ideas,
His ancestors whispered it was the end of the Age of Innocence.

His obsidian eyes riveted to the skystone
Could glimpse a whole future in reservations,
The decline of all his sons and grandsons,
He prayed to the spirits so native wisdom should not atone
For the tragic fate of his line
Trying to make himself whole with the Canyon
Where he had hunted and often seen dawn shine,
Preparing his mind and soul to fall under the wilderness’s Dominion.

Sophie Doulut, July 2024

Mallorca Full Moon

Above the medieval star-shaped stone citadel,
The Mallorca moon is becoming bright and full,
And the onlooker feels like unrealistic poor Astrophel,
Falling in love with unreachable pretty Stella so well.

Nobody knows of what fearful foreboding
The Mallorca moon is the esoteric harbinger
The day before she was still shivering in hiding
And now she brightened up as if a Weird Sister…

It does not only influence the wax and wane
Of the Mediterranean waves that sing with growling voices,
As the shepherds, from the top of their fan-shaped sacred mountain,
And surrounded with howling echoes and wild noises
Try every year to bring the midsummer flame down in vain…

It also rules Queen Esclarmunda’s mood and faith,
She, who worships as a heretic and a clandestine,
The Goddess of Perfection and Purity in her loggia so pristine,
Ushering Catholicism out of her palace as if a devilish wraith.

But welcoming with a smile and wide open arms
The motherless child from Sicily that would be King,
Named after her beloved husband in qualms
About his fights against his brother Peter from Aragon- heartwrenching.

In Esclarmunda’s extraordinary Kingdom of Clarity,
The Mallorcan Kings’ Palace bathes in sunlighted morality,
All year long from sunrise until the break of day,
Phoebus’s chariot flooding the place in any possible way.

Under the red and green beamed royal ceilings,
Esclarmunda worshipped her unearthly Eternity,
A faith that made men and women siblings,
And set forth everywhere all souls’ equality.

A modern woman in the Dark Ages she was,
Despite her traditional background and marriage,
A spiritual luminary that shone bright in her Age,
A beam light that illuminates the southern Sea of Iroise.

In the dedalus of rooms, her soul still lingers,
Shedding its divine light on the revered throne
She used to sit on and the rays of light her fingers
Stroking gently the Palace from high up above,
The sins and excesses of her past life without flourish nor singers.

On midsummer night, Esclarmunda the Great shines
And reveals her revised definition of femininity,
Spreading her astral light on the stone stairs she divines,
The moon her allegory, her memories her vehicle of affectivity.

She unveils the defensive grids and turrets
Above the moats of the Moorish citadel,
Covering with whiteness the cradle of her tenets,
And becoming full with the future heavenly birth of an Infidel.

As in death Esclarmunda remains alive,
And did not mind the spinning wheel on Earth,
She still comes back full with child of light to thrive,
An expecting Virgin who visits and blesses her former hearth.

Her melancholic prayers still resonate in the Chapel,
Calling for peace between Aragon and Mallorca,
Begging God her children not to lose or expel,
Pretending to act Catholic but full of cathartic stamina.

Sophie Doulut, July 2024

In Letters of Sand

That smiling former American G.I. I met someday
Did not mention that dire and distressing Day
When he had landed on a blood-red Normandy beach
While thinking back of his native Pennsylvania then out of reach.

His narrative voice never quivered
And he never showed any emotions
As he talked and I heard
He neither gave any explanations,
Nor recounted any tale of explosions,
Keeping to himself the past horrors locked up in his heart.

While we were chatting gaily,
His mind was no doubt wandering
Back to that country of sound and fury
Where violence could be blinding.

Who knows what he reminisced
In silence as the room was crowded,
Shouts from the waves versus criticisms hissed
Name calling in the wind versus shoulders patted.

Shrieking seagulls and deafening blasts,
Against a sorry sky and a scarlet sea,
Upon the present scene a vision of the past,
Amidst clinking glasses and the roaring laughter of the party.

Oblivious guests who now celebrate the D-Day
Do not realize fireworks sound like bombs,
And their cries of admiration only display
In the veteran’s mind, the voices from war pogroms.

Who knows what after war world
The G.I. slept, dreamt and lived in?
Another reality that cannot be set to word
A lonely, watery, and sandy mindscape he waded in.

Rejoicing in the might of his country,
Lucky enough to have survived the impiety
And the dark history of a European mainland
Where his platoon mates are still resting quietly
With only their names in letters of sand…

Sophie Doulut, July 2024

The Remnant of Clonmacnoise

Have you ever heard the story of the airship
The monks of Clonmacnoise had once in their chapel witnessed?
It seems it was not a figment of the imagination of the clerkship
And that such vessels from heaven could be seen and to roofs harnessed.

Above the Sea Lodge, a remnant of Clonmacnoise still levitates
Up in the sky above the crenellated stone building walls
Of the busiest trade square in the medieval heart of the city and its halls,
Like a religious and divine apparition the whole place it forever dominates.

It looks like the relic of a long-forgotten saint,
Straight from medieval Ireland and its cloisters,
Clonmacnoise, the abbey where monks used to faint,
Since they lost consciousness in the strength of their prayers.

The ship seems to have sailed over the Irish Sea
And then the ocean, until it could reach the Mediterranean,
To settle down under Galdric’s order and plea,
Awaiting for some miracle to happen both heavenly and subterranean.

Though the ship keeps wavering in the air,
It looks, to the tourist’s eye, like a weathervane,
But it is no common vessel anchored in vain,
It is wedged onto the Sea Lodge foul and fair.

How it came to be a piece of modern Catalan history,
It is hardly explainable even to the best medieval studies expert,
Though some Magi and magicians suggest another perception of its story,
The vessel having sailed through time vortexes according to a manuscript excerpt.

Be that as it may, be prepared to see a sailor climbing down
A rope fastened to the deck of the fairy ship,
Claiming he will, if you do not help him, be doomed to drown,
And in no time the existence of parallel worlds you will worship.

Will the archbishop of Saint John the Baptist’s Cathedral
Understand that the legend of the Clonmacnoise monks,
Through decades and centuries outlived them all,
And tell the Catalan priests about it without any goose bumps?

In a city where the Virgin Mary is standing hidden and inlaid in corner houses,
Unexpected miracles are bound to happen again,
The airship has travelled through millenaries, it will be repaid for its pain,
The Catalan sun and the vessel of phantasmagoria have ended up being eternal spouses.
Not even will the buried bearded giant of the monastery
Ever be able to share his covering of birch tree branches
To resurrect and take the airship back to County Offaly,
But the monks will also remain sitting on their wooden benches,

Praying to God for the lost spirits and souls of the sailors,
Still navigating on board the legendary airship,
So they can someday resume their voyage with honours,
And reach at last King Arthur’s Isle of Avalon to put an end to their everlasting trip.

Sophie Doulut, July 2024

Grounded

I keep remembering that surreal time
When as far as I could see –
From the windows I would wipe with a dime –
A snow blanket would lie ahead of me.

It would cover the wide gardens
Of that upper class American suburb,
An ethereal and silent row of Edens
Where I expected to see the Lion, the Witch and the children,
Walking through the burdened trees lit by a nearby bulb street.

Every day the radio would blurp
A desperate weather forecast
And sizzle the names of Lower Paxton
District schools in its broadcast.

I would listen – to my dismay –
To the snow warnings every day,
And enumeration of the county schools lay
That would close for the day –
Notwithstanding the Amish and Mennonite names at play.

And I would gaze at the mountain of snow
That blocked the entrance door with a bright glow…

Everything was glitter and spangle
The houses had donned a white dress of silver sequins
That kept catching the sunlight in their dangle
As feathers mirror the sky on bird wings.

Serenity settled slowly
In our secluded life
Peace and quiet ready
In our hearts sounding like sweet fife.

It was a day to get lost into a wardrobe
The faun was playing the flute he had borrowed
And the Queen was waiting holding scepter and orb
But this fairy-tale was soon to be harrowed.

It was hard to get back to reality
After spending such a long time daydreaming
As I just found myself in custody
A caged bird behind windows singing.
I opened my heart out in a singsong
Almost humming an anthem to Sing-Sing
Prisoner of the snow outside crissing
Under the footsteps of the helpful neighbours for long.

I experienced the power of silence
And the vision of pristine whiteness
Everywhere inside and around the house –
A time of calm and patience –
Some solitary confinement leading to self-awareness
Filling the time blank with meditation and vows,
Contemplating the sky over the white sea
Outside and feeling erased completely…

Sophie Doulut, January 2024.

Lyre

He had been warned,
He knew the conditions –
He would be harmed
And would not without provisions
Resurrect her,
Either…

His melodious and gorgeous voice
And sheer talent for the lyre
Made both the unsmiling ferryman
And the growling dog so much rejoice
They stepped out of murky boat and mire
To guide him through their dead dark land.

He walked through the groaning shadows
Bemoaning their suffering and pains
Unharmed by their curses and claims
As his lyre deafened the ghosts’ vows.

Thanks to his tortoise shell armed with strings,
Hades was charmed and brought to tears,
Never had he heard the flapping sound of a swift angel’s wing
So well imitated by such a primitive instrument to his ears.

Hades was so moved and flummoxed
He could only reply to Beauty with Kindness
And accepted to let the inspiring Beloved
Leave with her companion the underworld of Darkness.

She would not see the sun however
If she looked in the eye of her lover-
But so thrilled was the lyre-player
That he promptly dismissed this warning of danger…

He took her hand newly freed
And hugged her in his strong arms,
With loving and intense kisses also anointed
Her forehead and cheeks without any qualms.

Whole he was anew,
And that was all he knew.
He then led her like a shepherd
Holding her close to his heart
His hand clasping hers unfettered
For fear she would bolt back like a hart.

As they neared the lighted entrance
Of the earthly somber and stygian den,
A halo of sunbeams started to dance
Around the knight and his young maiden.

Concerned with his Lady’s well-being,
In a flash he turned his face to hers,
Alas too early to break the charm powers
And with a sharp cry started vanishing

Her wan face no more human-looking.
He began to see her skelettic cheek bones
And her hand slowly loosened her grasp,
Letting his go – her eyes filled with horror-
She knew she was getting drawn up by two dark thrones

Of a subterranean Kingdom awaiting her,
Turning herself into a weak cadaver,
Her mouth an Ophelian wooden “O”
As her body was decomposing on the stones

They had been treading on and he thought –
“Oh”, “I lost her this time now and forever!”
She slowly became dust and a silvery whirlpool of glitter,
Then she fully disappeared into thin air from head to toe,
Leaving him aghast and from their relentless race agasp…
And all that was left of her
Was around him a veil of ether…

Sophie Doulut, November 2023

Diving into a Larimar stone

While swimming deftly and swiftly into clear aquamarine water,
Lifting tiny waves that splashed against tiled walls,
After running quickly on the surface and at the tip pf my fingers,
I entered fantastic oneiric waterfalls…

My shadow projecting itself onto the floor,
Circled with white and blue irregular quarters,
Reflections of waverlets framing for me the door
To a mysterious underworld that in my mind still wanders,

Like some immaterial and unreliable chart
Designing itself in an unclear and shadowy way
Under my swaying mute and amphibian heart,
And getting printed slowly to my greatest dismay
As if ink were stamped liquid with skill and art
Onto the base of the pool as if at the end of a letter
Only to make sure the bliss of that moment I would forever remember…

The drawing of dozens of bluish and whitish window panes,
Both constructing and deconstructing itself at every move,
Water drops lapping at my ear as if in pain,
Or giggling chimingly and charmingly to forcibly remove
Any cobweb, any cause for worry or grief from the maze of my brain…

Feeling thus refreshed and reborn into the world,
After letting water wash both my mind and soul,
Through the water sieve my eyesight became unblurred,
And my earthly being came out of the pool a complete whole…

As if baptized anew I will keep in mind
The floor tiled with fish, snake or dragon scales
Looking also like a mermaid’s fins and tail,
Enshrined into the pool of water I left behind…

And off away to a sea of sapphire
I went, wearing a lapis lazuli bathing suit,
And bearing of many gems an attire,
Diving into dark blue and turquoise waves like a newt.

Sophie Doulut, July 2023

The Clockwork of the Heart

My heart is thumping like the Mad Hatter’s clock,
Always beating too fast and running late,
Being struck by the thunder of a flying-by geese flock,
Never realizing that falling in love was its fate.

Somehow afraid of missing many opportunities,
My heart is getting so easily disoriented
It never follows Nature’s course and deities,
Cupid always picking the arrow that’s poisoned,
The way Puck the drop into the wrong ear poured,
Thus changing the path of its destiny.

A tiny mistake that led to great consequences,
A fantasy Queen fornicating with a vile beast,
And Donkey Bottom the lover of Her Excellence.
Who would believe this even at a banquet’s feast?

Not even Titania’s flower fairies,
Nor even the twins of a Twelfth Night,
All lost in a parallel and unknown reality
Of which they are only bearing the plight.

Who can understand the wandering of the heart
Except maybe our dear and estimated friend The Bard?
For I cannot figure out of my heart the whereabouts,
Nor even on its disorderly way the roundabouts.

I wish it were like a Swiss mechanism,
Always on time and never mistaken,
Being struck by the right arrow, not Venus’s sadism,
Never frozen or broken so it should awaken
To everlasting faithfulness, not harsh criticism,
And of requited love at last partaken.

Sophie Doulut, June 2023

The wee weary earworm of worry

It wriggles into your Eustachian tube
Slow, but determined to remain there,
Nestling in the warmth of your mental channel tube,
Squiggling until he ranks in your playlist as the winner.

Even if you box your ears,
Nothing will make it come out,
Not even a certain flea in your ear
That had warned you time and out.

You can’t even turn a deaf ear to it,
As it is your inner ear that deals with it,
Not the complicated designed physical one outside,
And its rhythmical ring movements inside
Your ear make you hum in tune with the tide
As it waxes and wanes inside the seashells
Your tympanum mistakes for whispers from mermaids in Hell.

Music has a way of crawling
Into your mind like moles do,
Digging deeper into the dark inkling
Corridor of your ear without much ado.

Making on its way rattle-snake noise
Paralysing memory through hypnosis
With the snake-like contradiction and poise
Of its moist advancing body in the tunnel of your Nemesis.

This is what an earworm feels like,
A bug stuck in your ear and buzzing
Inside the cave of your head aching
With the same desperate sound as a bumble-bee.

Sophie Doulut, February 2024

The Inishmore travellers

Travelling to Inishmore island
Is like sailing to Avalon,
The enchanted fairy land
That inspired the navigation
Of a medieval patron saint of Ireland,
And the book of the life of Saint Brendan…

When you set foot on the gusty and wind-beaten Isle of Inishmore,
Like a Yukon pioneer searching for precious ore,
You believe you will find King Arthur’s tombstone,
Lying in the nave of a buried chapel, on its own.

Or, as a foreigner, you expect to see
The awry vision of the Banshee
Shouting with her shrill and acrid voice
The bad omen that makes her frantically rejoice,
And desperately chill your spine all along
Your trip into the land of her folksong.

And you tread along the stony walls
That make the black cows prisoners
Despite the interested tourists’ calls
Of the green and grassy cells closed by farmers
Who barely greet the most unwelcome strangers,
Treating them as if they were Viking invaders.

Behind the small whitewashed church
The priest rings the bell for Mass time,
While the sheep get scared and lurch,
Like the overloaded ferry over the waves, sublime.

And outside the village you go,
To the cemetery full of grief and woe,
To contemplate the names of the migrants,
Who came back with a tag on their toe,
As in death they are Irish, not Americans.

Inishmore has Inishmaan and Inisheer in tow,
Two other sister islands which follow
The fate of their elder in dignified prow,
As if they had made the sacred vow,
To eavesdrop on the music of Inishmore pubs’ violin bow.

Sophie Doulut, juillet 2023

The Fisherkings’ house

Out of nowhere suddenly appeared
A tiny stone house on the stream
We were quietly approaching on tiptoe,
Our breath held in fear and awe,
Believing we were walking in a dream
As sunbeams through the green foliage had pioneered
Before we even knew there was quite a sight
From anotherworldly enchanted rite…

Underneath the boiling and thunderous eddy
Lived enchanted bluish salmons and silver trouts,
Swimming swiftly under young Ophelia’s body,
Round the dark algae coloured like stouts.

Like a realm of maimed kings the house stood
As they were lying near the sacred silver dish,
Be it wind, hail, rain, snow, storm or flood,
There they would round the trap door wait for fish.

And underneath their feet the water would flow,
Expecting a sword to surge up through a billow,
They would sit up straight before the fireplace
Every time drops and foam they would face.

And say their prayers in Latin they would,
Grinning and moaning because of the wound,
Their common inherited and godly stigma,
That set them apart from any kind of Doxa.

Reincarnations or ghosts of the fairy-talish Fisherking,
The monks would spend their time together relishing
The peace of Nature and as a chorus they would sing,
Psalms and hymns to honour God their King.

To whoever they would meet they would say
They cared not for good and riches –
But only for their catch of the day –
And they would hum against Celtic witches…

Sophie Doulut, juillet 2023

9, Westland Row

In the Dublin street so familiar to Oscar Wilde
Played a part of my life really weird and wild,
Behind the noble façades of posh Edwardian houses,
Inside a shadowy and shabby flat below the best city penthouses.

In that dark, dreary and unlikely mesh grated place,
Shared by three genuine and gentle Irish lasses,
You would stumble upon a lad’s droopy and drunken face
Who had entered that ladies’ den at night without his glasses.

And you would hear the early morning cries
Of the starving and sky-soaring seagulls,
Scrutinizing and scanning all the nooks and crannies,
Of the derelict Dublin houses that looked like hulls.

Walking by the window of Sweeney’s pharmacist,
You were able to catch glimpse of a wooden apothecary’s counter
On which were lying medical advice sheets for a bad cyst
“To drain on your own”, before turning round the corner.

But you had to get lost in a maze of doors
And open air courtyards giving way to wooden parquet floors
Only if you could get out of that sorry and sad strumpet city flat
Where there was not enough space for anyone no matter what.

The main door had a tiny and frail bolt on
That could be unlatched with so much ease
You could not believe it was still in use
As anyone could enter that Bohemian flat
As easily as you could sneak into a pub.

The three Irish girls had a busy life together
Dragging boyfriends at night into their rooms
And pretending to be as virgin as ever
Once their suitors had refused to be their grooms.

They would take the pill every night
The way they would swallow the Body of Christ
On Sundays, when the priest – come what may,
Would place it on their tongues with dismay,

Only half-sensing the real nature of their sins,
Guessing half-truths and lies through their skins,
Living in their hovel full of lust,
And binge-drinking until dusk,
They would not notice the heavy dust
On their smudged, smeared and soiled carpet as it must.

They knew all the secrets of Temple Bar
And went to parties on foot really far
Never relinquishing a single round,
To which they no doubt felt bound.

Sophie Doulut, March 2024

The hidden dragon of Spanish Catalonia

Of all the well-known seaside cities in the world,
Barcelona is the one that shines like a multifaceted jewel,
Anointed with the liquid and bright sunbeams uncurled,
As if baptized by Saint George’s dragon blood after the duel.


On the battlefield roof of Casa Batlló can be found
The remains of a last breath-exhaling mythical monster,
Pierced through and through as if a mere hound
Had bitten to death the devil itself above a cloister.


The sword of the Saint deeply dipped
Into the gigantic beast’s hilly backbone,
And left it lying with its spine tipped,
A row of thorns half-dead and ripped.


While underneath, tiles of different blue hues
Now indicate how deep the monster drowned
Into the topsy-turvy Mediterranean Sea seen by crews
Of tourist sailors unable to distinguish sky from ground.


At the other end of Barcelona’s Park Güell
Does the dragon’s tail also visibly appear,
Its glittering glowing trencadis shell
Swaying and weaving through the heights clear,
Almost circling the little ginger church nearby,
And failing to choke to death the passersby…


Sophie Doulut, juillet 2023

The kaleidoscopic basilica

As you walk into the vast and churchlike forest of stones
That make up Gaudi’s gaudy Barcelonian basilica,
You start realizing you have stepped into twilight zones,
A supernatural world where you can pray to the madonna,
And be anointed with rainbow and heavenly lights,
Where the music of the spheres ring to your ears from heights.


A sepulchral dimension where you lose track of time,
Dazed by the vertigo of colours from up above,
Amazed at the surrounding carrousel of the Sublime,
Expecting from the land of Peace the flight of a Dove,
And feeling dizzy with the muffled sounds
Made by the lay pilgrims shuffling their feet around.


Along the white pillars that get painted
Every hour with some different magic daylight,
You may walk and sense the forest projected
Onto the exotic pillar-trees West and Southside
While North and East offer the soul’s respite
Within a chapel with pews and candles alighted :


What you can see in there goes beyond eyesight,
And chimes louders than any glass of crystal held tight…

Sophie Doulut, juillet 2023

The Euphonic Tree

There’s a blessed and special time of the year
When trees recover their shrill voices
And their foliage gets agitated as if in fear,
But only stretches with new sap as life rejoices.


All those invisible but loud choirs
Deliver secret and hidden messages all entire,
With cryptic and coded foreign words aligned on wires,
Or cues taken from a musical as attires.


Thus the trees have turned into syrinxes,
Chirping such melodious and harmonious tunes,
Inheriting their skilful art from Nature opportune,
But also becoming half human like mythical sphynxes.


Be they fairies, sylphs or Macbeth’s witches,
They cast a spell on our human hearts
Every time the wood pigeon’s head twitches,
Every time the turtledove’s nest shows its arts
Of intertwined leaf lace as the howl screeches
And the sun slowly rises on the woods of the harts.


The blue tit endlessly knocks at the window with its beak,
While the blackbirds out of hunger never cease to tweet,
And create such a flux of energy as they finally tweak
The wiggling scraggling worm and no longer bleat
That the enchanted tree cannot eventually look weak.


As the leaves whisper together in the wind
And as all the bird songs sound deafening,
At the time when night falls and trees cannot be seen,
The Tree of Life heals the feelings from your spleen…


Sophie Doulut, août 2023

The Ghosts of Catalunya

Once a year in the cobbled and crowded streets,
You will hear the harrowing and hurried hustle and bustle
Of the Easter procession and its flurry of fleets
Of black and red pointed hats which struggle
Under the waving weight of the wooden effigies.

They look gloomy and gothic,
Fresh from the pit of Hell,
Carrying the burden of their blood-red faith – so Catholic!
Sinners from another age who ring a bell
And shake incense before their convoy,
Fallen angels asking for redemption as a ploy
To reach God the way smoke does,
And pray to Mary to alleviate their woes.

Barefeet they waltz and walk
Sometimes grinning under the pain
Inflicted by the yoke of their train,
Like Dante’s grotesque ghouls that stalk
The Pilgrim on his way to Heaven
As he gazes at them – souls, both lost and heathen.

The din of chains rattling the ground
That keep scratching the black asphalt
Are akin to the chains of Victorian ghosts,
Making the citizens of Catalunya their hosts,
Those yearly spirits never come to a halt,
Vanishing for the rest of the year to avoid being found.

Penitents walk in sadness and sour sorrows,
Women bending their veiled and apocalyptic heads,
Men challenging their resistance to pain and sore throes,
While children pray to God their hearts filled with dreads.

In-between breaks, faces and jaws tighten,
Eyes grow hard and tearful,
Some bear as if it were theirs Christ’s burden
To cleanse their spirits and souls, sulky and sinful.

They suffer until their bodies sweat,
And their heavy robes grow wet,
They have become the water of their eyes
A trail of tears on their way to the skies…

The bell tolls its mournful tone,
And the holy bearers resume their tasks,
Holding their breaths as they atone
Under the stifling fabric of their masks.

An eerie vision in the city medieval streets
Of self-torturing and self-flogging train
Of fanatical and faithful believers with sore and filthy feet
Filling your heart with sublime awe in vain.

Good Friday becomes the earthly portal
Letting the land of the Dead with the land of the Living
Intertwine and mingle like water in a cordial,
Christ being resurrected and once again breathing,

As evidence of the existence of a bridge
Between parallel worlds over the blue ridge
Of the Pyrenees – close by – blinding with prestige
The unfortunate rationalist turned by Faith into a midge.

Sophie Doulut, April 2024.

Through the green stained-glass window

Sitting in front of that green stained-glass window
I realized – through the kaleidoscopic whirls of light-
That it was an invitation to the green pastures of a meadow
As my eye was caught by the twirling shamrocks in the corners shining bright.

That stained-glass window was no more than the door
To another world full of codes and chivalry
A world full of springs, rath fairies and revelry,
Where a RoundTable was laid bare and empty
Inside an enchanted castle well-kept by a full-acorned white boar.

In that world, time was of a different essence,
Souls could travel through a green tunnel swiftly
Until they could be reincarnated to make a difference
Elves, leprechauns and fairies exist not in dreams only.

In the bower of Nature where our souls come from,
The Kingdom was led by the Green Knight himself
No matter where Sir Gawain could ever roam
With or without his girdle on, his head would never be on the shelf.

Through the intertwinings painted on the glass
Circles within circles give the key to the universe
Whose mathematical formula appears on the reverse
Side of the esoteric designs green like grass.

Mesmerised by those endless vortexes,
Our pupils keep dilating like those of a cat
Facing the multidimensionality of the Earth axis and senses
While feeling the innate powerlessness of a tiny gnat.

Head spinning, heavy eyelids and eyes drooping
Complete the clinical description of symptoms
Every metaphysician fool experiences meditating
Dazed by the divine representation of colliding atoms.

The tiled floor underneath flowed with light
Shining through a further opposite window
Whose beam ended at the feet of the widow
Who was praying there with tearful eyes bright.

Now convinced life after life existed
Not only in Tir-Na-Nog but also in physics
Though she could not explain its laws nor her instincts,
Even after the salmon of knowledge she had ingested.

She could not explain the miracle of the presence
Of that Celtic circumvoluted green stained-glass
And its Pagan signs that gave her prescience
Inside that very Catholic church, before Mass.

Sophie Doulut, February 2024

Below His Station

Of course she represented nothing to him,
But he let her believe otherwise,
To pick the dainty flower of her youth unwise,
A fox trotting around the target of his whim.

Conceited and innocent, she believed his praises,
A dupe to his crafted circumvoluted speech,
Convinced was she of his cunning flattery,
And also charmed by his looks and beauty.
In his eyes she would get lost in mazes,
Trying in vain to remain out of his reach.

So she surrendered with a sad smile
When she could not resist courtship any longer,
She hoped his viper’s tongue could not be so vile
As to hide the villainous truth to her.

She had not the slightest chance,
Mesmerised by his peacock dance,
But she trusted so much her own beauty,
He sounded smitten with her in all sincerity,
Alas, the poor and unfortunate girl awoke
A few months later with a sudden poke
From inside her soiled and swollen belly,
Wondering whether it would be a bloke or a fanny.

She had believed he was to wed her
And that he would all the more love her
If she gave him what she had treasured for so long
But she knew nothing about social codes – and then he said: “So long!”

Below his station she was,
And she would always be,
No hope to be wasted
On any gentlemen or Lord-to-be,
She learnt the hard way what it was
To look like a Lady without being one,
Her youth and life away she had casted
To the path of infamy, and from shame won.

She then left Europe in a hurry
Wishing no one would inquire after her
In her small and tiny village of Tipperary
Gone for ever, she did not cast a last glance altogether

At her homeland when the ship started sailing,
She wanted to banish everything from her memory
To recreate a true life for herself and the unborn baby,
In another land where social class mingling and crossing

Would be a more tolerated predicament
A purgatory instead of the designated Hell
Where she would always be followed by tourment,
On new and virginal land where one could hear the toll of Liberty Bell…

(inspired by Margaret Atwood’s novel entitled Alias Grace)

Sophie Doulut, February 2024

The Rainbow Stone

Through the black gem a real rainbow appears,
With true colours and a disquieting eye in the middle,
The Eye of the Cosmos, the Door to unknown fears,
The Unconscious of the world never playing second fiddle.

Inside the dark and eerie Abyss of that Rainbow Stone,
I can hear Mexican cries, melancholic shouts and mellow voices,
Along with the dropping of squaws’ tears, mute and atone,
A world within each pearl of tear, life with sacrifices and choices.

At night my dreams are inspired by the Rainbow Stone,
The Obsidian lies by my bedside, instilling into my ears
The noises of ancient peoples living long before we were born,
Their whispers and secrets of their civilizations forever bygone.

So You, now, who do not believe in the Cosmic snake
That flies into your mind unperceived and unseen,
Be aware that it came along with the Rainbow Stone,
Climbed the staircase of your Eustachian tubes
To hiss into your souls secrets forsaken and lorn.

Alas, the Eye of the Cosmos is hard to fathom, said The Bard Beedle,
And as difficult to slip into as thread into the eye of a needle.

Sophie Doulut, The Arcanes of the Mind, June 2023.

Potomac’s visitation

It 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…


Sophie Doulut, juin 2023

The Land of the Rings

That day, as we were standing at the Galway Fort of the Ring,
You folded your knee and offered me a handmade shiny ring,
Not Queen Isolde’s emerald and antique gold token ring,
That King Mark had twisted round her ring finger –
Not THAT ring,


Nor even Tristan’s silver and moss green ring of jasper,
But an intertwined and authentic Celtic Claddagh ring,
The famous symbol of love and faithfulness –
Within a ring,
A circle of traditions, and a charm of tenderness,
Within THAT ring.


Like Tristan and Isolde, now characters of Wagner’s opera ring,
You wanted to capture my likeness, always smiling,
And embrace my soul, as ever, free and always flying,
Hugging me in your holy and sacred wedding ring,
Which made me all the more a prisoner and your Thing.


Into Lough Corrib I threw away your beloved ring,
And the swans switfly after that jewel started swimming,
Your eyes started suddenly blinking and weeping,
You ended up gasping and your mouth went gaping,
As I was not the Lady you thought, but a mere changeling,
A wild creature to wed, you would never be willing,
You should have known I would never wear a man’s ring…


The only ring that you could to me – with love – bring
Is like the fire that will within my soul be crackling,
Or like the puffin that will on –
Michael island be cackling,
So please, next time, slip on my finger the Skellig Ring
So it can make my heart grow not keys – but freedom wings,
Or even better, the Ring of Kerry is the one –
You should be considering…


Sophie Doulut, June 2023

The White Tarento of Mauretania


As fast as quicksilver, it climbed up the wall,
Its visible heart pounding,
Its cold eye darting at me,
The everyday dragon I had never seen before,
Invisible yet present, gigantic and small.


It popped from behind the furniture
Without any warnings, omens or forebodings,
An unexpected treat from Mother Nature,
An invasion of the Wilderness into human lodgings.


Igniting a sense of threat and urgency,
An adrenalin surge into the blood,
A sudden shot of forgotten energy,
As it turned its snake-head away from the mud
Of the ground it was trampling on minutes before,
It appeared like a lightning tearing the bright summer sky,
Scurrying along the wall and springing at my pinafore,
Taking me aback as I gasped, on feeling its skin so dry.


The end of its tail
In my hand dead as a nail,
A token left to no avail,
The fine remains of a broken flail
That Death could not but fail.


Snow-white and snake-like,
Half lizard and half gecko,
A mythical creature shooting up from Hell,
Hades’s gruesome sidekick and Persephone’s white crocodile,
A harmless breed turned into a running reptile,
Still bearing Cleopatra’s fragrance and blood smell,
A four-footed Nile vampire whose whistling hiss has no echo.


What strange message were you the bearer of ?
White-scaled visitor with an intriguing look,
Surreal and eerie Death-coloured Ban-Shee,
Rebirth of the English Dragon often thought of
And mentioned endlessly in the Welsh myth book
For its fight against the Red twin until its last breath,
Back from the past and wandering through homes – free.


Surrounded with clouds of red Catalonian dragonflies,
Acting like the Egyptian plague of locusts,
The Tarento of Mauretania basks in the sun until it fries,
Turning magically from white lizard into lobster-red rust,
Ashes of a Welsh dragon at first weak but then robust,
As it brought victory home, proud and noble,
Another Beowulf, ignored from most people,
Fighting against another wild phoenix-like Tarento,
Both arising like ghosts from the Gothic Castle of Otranto.


Sophie Doulut, Octobre 2023

Let the souls out

Aboard the ship of bad omen headed to Toronto,
The tired and poor Irish crowds travel huddled together,
A dark agony in the hold of the gloomy and eerie cargo
Where all Catholics and Protestants agree to surrender.


They cannot fight against one another
Sharing the worst of maritime promiscuity
The vermin of mattresses and unprivate privy,
The moanings of women giving birth in a corner


While others were giving their last breath,
Within the din of babies crying their lungs out,
Gazed at by petrified women trusting their faith –
The souls of the deceased that could not be let out


Would haunt mankind for eternity,
And remain trapped within the ocean,
Calling their loved ones with mermaid tenacity
And renewed stubborn wave-like devotion.


The Irish from the North had been cast there,
Like dice rolling on the table of Fate,
Despised and mocked for their ginger hair,
Lucky enough not to have been thrown overboard with hate.


The young Erins would become maids
In the richest colonial Canadian homes
Embroidering the finest quilts and plaids
To thank young Native Americans for their welcome.


In their fabrics
Esoteric symbols would be intertwined
And their mimics
Showed they were whispering to their deceased loved ones.


In the scullery,
They would hear terrifying stories
Of maids young and pretty
Falling for young gentlemen – God, have mercy!


And they knew they must resist
The whims and fantasies of gentlemen
That would rob them of their maidenheads in a twist
And in the wink of an eye – Lord, Amen.


They were taught the hard way –
On sometimes finding in bed the scary corpse
Of a sister with whom they would pray
After a doctor’s knife had cut her life away
Leaving her with bloody legs without force
As she had obviously sinned anyway…


Then they would shout
“Let the soul out!”
And recommend the creature
To God as it could be read in the scripture.


Needless to say,
Life was hard in those days
But Toronto was in its heyday
And Ulster in decay
So Canada was the fate of Irish castaways…


Sophie Doulut, February 2024.

The Pineapple of the Mind

Little did we all know in the past
About the workings of the brain and mind,
And with all the new knowledge that will now last
We are now ready to celebrate what scientists find.


We, the once distraught People are now enlightened
As the mineral nestled snuggly in our brains,
With its colour blue like the ridge of mountains,
Revealed its true nature to the physicists it enchanted.


Our mysterious Third Eye thus deeply hidden
Accutely unaware of its powers were we,
But the poets and writers had this fruit eaten,
Like Eve in the garden of Heaven before the tree.


No wonder they could describe Beauty,
Thanks to that kaleidoscope of Life and Fury,
A whirlpool of colourful channels of Energy
That would break off the manacles of Humanity,
Who had never believed the way to God to be so dainty,
Deprived of Vanity and the physical concepts of Deity.


Apple of our eyes, as far as we can see,
A door to another world and magic sea,
The pineapple of our minds making us free,
While Adam’s apple simply doesn’t agree.

Sophie Doulut, octobre 2023.

Eye of Sapphire

Her brownish palms held out,
Presenting 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 eyes of Djinn –
Two black tourmalines 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 colourful 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 dance up and down the staircase whorled.


What she treasured from Istanbul
Were her memories, above all,
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 gem in 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…


Sophie Doulut, January 2024

The Epiphany of the Four Seasons coat

Proud forehead and burning glance,
The Medicine Woman started her dance
Chanting her prayers in a strange language
Blurting spasmodic onomatopoeia from her lineage.


She looks like game with her feathered headdress,
Pheasant-like in her gestures and address,
A dark owl which suddenly stops dead
In front of the ghosts which turn red
In anger as if deprived of holy tobacco
And still haunting the living with an embargo.


Gathered crowd and curious minds
Defile with their questions her ritual
Loud egos shouting from the seats behind
As if she were on stage fighting for mere victual.


Empty heads with lost souls
Searching for an answer to their earthly exile
Without listening to her words flying like ghouls
Throughout the dark room, failing to beguile
The eager gold-diggers shrieking like owls,
When her juniper twigs caught fire with guile
Filling space with foggy smoke vile.


Moaning and muttering muffled syllables,
Beating the drum with the back of her hand,
Keeping it in tune without any logic explainable,
She started dancing with the ghosts of her own land.


Turning around with her tightly-tied rabbit paws
That hit and whipped her back with every movement,
Her leather pinafore uncovered the gems worn by the squaws
Of the reindeer herder tribe from the Siberian Tuva settlement.


Blue labrumen and turquoise were hanging like celestial medals,
Red agate and garnet stood for physical wounds,
The Shamanic woman divided herself into two bodies
Symbolizing the marriage of Heaven and Earth.


Still humming her tribal melodies
As if delivering by herself her own new birth,
And like a wild flower losing its petals,
She slowly took off her feathered coat,
Still revering her spiritual guide and scapegoat.


The very animal soul that had inhabited her
All along the traditional and collective blessing
Had had thus us gathered in front of her
And was now leaving an inner bleeding
As she could feel its terrible anger
At having been hurt by a man hunting
In the very woods where the spirit beast power
Had been dancing and growling,
Therefore dominating other spirits all over…


She suddenly became a She-bear,
Walking like a heavy and stomping creature
Covered in fir- brown and far from fair,
Paws hitting the drum as they would defile a tree,
Without adding any other feature
To the monster she then seemed to be.


In a final dramatic and ecstatic dance sidestep,
Her magic vanished and her mumbling stopped,
The leather coat got caught in her instep,
Her Winter eyes set on Fall feathers robbed
By a sudden ghostly and ominous apparition
Invisible for most people but not for the Elect,
Be that as it may, is it an owl or an intuition
That led her to end her prayer in her dialect?


She bent her head and lost from her coat her foliage,
But a spark of felicity glittered in her eyes
As she caught sight of something strange:
Hearts vibrated as if together in a voyage,
As a Spring ray of sun was sparkling through chests,
And Summer flooded through her own breast,


Not only illuminating the room,
But also the whole universe…


Sophie Doulut, December 2023.

From the Barbican to the Colony

On English Plymouth harbour, there’s a gateway,
The sky is framed within an invisible door
Seagulls flitter through it and away,
The way the Pilgrim Fathers walked through it before.


A few yards away, the list of passengers reads
On the stone walls of the medieval neighbourhood,
And sounds like an obituary among widows’weeds,
Doffed and scattered everywhere until they took roots.


Through the arched and framed doorway
The Pilgrims could gaze at the waves,
Wondering what future lay ahead away,
Relinquishing their lives at sea on board ship-graves…


But that boarding gate
Didn’t exist in those days,
It is only the modern symbol
Of their displaced fate away.


Most of them knew they would never come back,
Such a heart-wrenching decision they had to make,
Not even knowing if they could make their way back
If they ever sickened during the never-ending voyage,
While the memories of their loved ones would fade,
Along with the shores of their land and village…


Their minds were only filled with hope,
And the prayers and psalms from church,
Seeking for a pious and peaceful place to elope,
With their Divine love nestled within their hearts,
To worship the Sacred on some welcoming new earth.


They would fight at sea against scurvy,
Even though they would be sorely hungry,
And as the seagulls shrieked in the sky,
They set sail on a May morning as the sun was high.


Little did they know of their future homes,
Sons and daughters sobbing on their mothers’ bosoms,
On watching their fathers follow the course of the Sun,
Clinging to their Faith while waving during their wharf run.


Gazing at the wake of the majestic Mayflower
Taking the best and strongest men away forever,
Far from native Sutton and its Plym river,
By the order of some Captain Smith their leader,
Forsaken children and wives started cursing the New Englander,
Virginia, Jamestown and King James’s charter,
Thinking the Sun would never warm up their souls in winter,
As it would never brighten up the path of a returning Pilgrim either,
Making them feel damned for the next spring and summer,
As would never ever set foot again on English soil any King’s explorer,
Who would have been a Mayflower passenger,
And a would-be Massachusetts settler…


Sophie Doulut, January 2024

Aladdin’s Trees

Along the road stand crepe myrtles
Bearing grapes of flowers
Like so many jewels
Gems of the sun and earth wed together.

Their bright and vivid colors
Light up the path of humans
Who walk demurely and coyly
Underneath them,
Ignoring the language
Of those Chinese and Japanese tokens
Of love and wealth.

They can see the beauty of their red hoards
But can hardly penetrate it.
Has everyone forgotten about Aladdin’s testimony ?
Can’t anybody just spot jewels
In place of their flowery burdens ?

Trees whisper to you humans
To stop hurrying and start taking heed,
Plucking gems from trees
Is what is expected from you.

And as you pick the gems,
A whole book of knowledge
Will be opened.

No password is required,
Sesame won’t require anything
From you.

But as you look into the shining gems,
You will see a reflection of your soul.

He that understands the command
Of Aladdin’s trees
Will be blessed with the knowledge
Of the whole world.

Such speaks the voice of the Occult
Sounding from the deep hollows
Of the cave of the mind,
And that Man shall be disclosed
All the secrets of life and after-life…

Now I’m asking –
Have you ever noticed
The brilliant stones
Borne by crepe-myrtle trees ?

Sophie Doulut, Les Arcanes de l’Esprit, 1997-2009

The Ivory Horse

One day I rode a magnificent ivory horse
It took me up high into the sky
Galloping as fast as it could,
Bolting from one cloud to the other,

And I finally landed
Onto another soil,
A foreign kingdom
Where strange people
Spoke a different tongue.

‘Maybe I will find
My Arabian prince’,
Thought I.
‘Where can I meet Thee?’
Said I.

Surprisingly the horse replied
‘Who do you think I am?
Some mere machine
With mechanical designs,
With no heart inside?’
Whined He.

And like Aladdin
Riding an ebony horse
I realized true love
Was not predictable
And could take Ovidian shapes.

Being thus invisible
To my eyes,
But not to my heart,
Being deaf
To my ears,
But not to my soul.

The ivory horse
Was but an allegory
Of the love
I hadn’t seen
It was withering
Like some forgotten orchid
In the realm of the Unconscious.

So hark, reader, hear me!
Love can be hidden
Within a friend’s heart,
Within an acquaintance’s eyes,
Love can be found
Next door,
Across from where you live,
And ignored
For being too common
And not original.

But the harp of your soul
Plays in tune with it,
And your mind might know,
But will fatefully turn down
The apple of your eyes…

Sophie Doulut, Les Arcanes de l’Esprit, 1997-2009

Chuckin’ corn

Here I am –
Sitting on a rocking chair
Out there on the front porch
Of a Southern home
Wrenching off the green leaves out
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
An 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…

Sophie Doulut, Les Arcanes de l’Esprit, 1997-2009