Transparence of the World

Transparence of the World by Jean Follain, translated from the French by W. S. Merwin, 131 pages.
Follain died at the age of 68 (or maybe 67; Merwin talks about his death, hit by a car in 1971, but he doesn't mention the month). Follain lived through both world wars, worked as a lawyer, and wrote poetry.
Many of the poems evoke a live lived simply, with work, food, love, and death all discussed and allowed to pass.
The poem "Domestic Life," speaks of
"vegetables that are scraped or peeled
to nourish beautiful girls" quickly followed by
"animals bled in the broad day
whose grating cry
is lost in the light."
Strange and moving poems. I feel like I should smile ruefully when I read them, and then say quietly to myself something like, "well, ain't that a kick in the head?" The poems leave you strangely melancholy, aware that it's all passing to quickly, too violently, and that it's happening that way for everyone you see.
As I was writing this I opened the book and went looking for that one sad poem, the one about the man who had died too young, but it turned out that this description fit almost all of them.

A child is born
in a vast landscape
half a century later
he is simply a dead soldier. . .