“Event”

by Jean Follain

Translated by Heather McHugh

Everything is an event

for those who know how to tremble

the droplet that falls

carrying reflections

of barns and stables

the sound of a pin

falling on marble

milk boiling

at day’s end

the moments that drag

in colorless rooms

when the woman falls asleep.

Jean Follain (1903–1971) was a French poet known for his minimalist lyricism, evoking ordinary moments charged with quiet transcendence. “Event” encapsulates his recurring theme: the extraordinary hidden within the everyday, seen through the lens of acute awareness and emotional sensitivity.

The poem’s central idea is contained in its opening line:

“Everything is an event / for those who know how to tremble.”

Follain suggests that true perception requires vulnerability—to “tremble” is to feel deeply, to be open to the smallest details of existence. For such people, even the mundane becomes momentous: a drop of water, falling, carries within in it the image of whole landscape . “The sound of a pin / falling on marble” evokes both fragility and precision—a moment so delicate it becomes monumental in stillness.

“Milk boiling / at day’s end” places us in a domestic setting, ordinary yet intimate, contrasting with the metaphysical scope of the opening lines.

The poem democratizes experience—no hierarchy exists between great historical events and the quiet gestures of domestic life. Everything matters, provided we are capable of sensing it.

“Event” captures Follain’s belief that poetry resides in perception, not in the magnitude of what is perceived. The poem is almost a moral statement: to live fully, one must remain sensitive enough to tremble at life’s smallest occurrences.