Becoming

TWO POEMS by GUY GOFFETTE

Art by Pinyu Hwang

Translators Note

Guy Goffette published “The Great Tide” and “The Pearl” in Pain perdu (2020), his seventeenth volume of poetry. To placate his importuning publisher during a fallow period of convalescence, Goffette rounded up unfinished poems from a lifetime of poem-making—"this one missing a foot, that one missing an ear.” He polished them and aptly titled the work Pain perdu, literally meaning ‘lost/stale bread’ but connoting bread reclaimed by soaking it in egg, then frying and slathering the slices with butter and sugar—what English speakers call French toast.

In this volume, dismay and wonder shade together in poems as diverse in form as they are in content. The material ranges over childhood, relationships, ecology, aging, dying, writer’s block, and the art of poem-making. Eloquent but never arcane, these poems are lyrical yet controlled expressions of life experience and provide a counterpoint to the fashion for abstract and cerebral poetry. “The Great Tide” and “The Pearl” are examples of the wise and sensitive poems collected in Pain perdu, written by a long-time seeker in the world of illusions. Guy Goffette died on March 28, 2024.

Goffette’s formidable powers of invention are everywhere evident. He uses multiple clauses, participles, and appositions to layer in complexity, but his grammar is flawless. His line breaks are dynamic, each line a lucid moment, sometimes leading precipitously to the edge of a cliff, but always the lines turn back into discovery.  I hold to C. K. Williams’s proposition that you don’t translate French poetry into “English” but into poetry. Pain perdu offers a translator unalloyed delight in discovering musical equivalences in English—in other words, poetry in another key.

Kathryn Kimball

Deux poèmes

By Guy Goffette

La Grande Marée

Ainsi nous avions pris rendez-vous

pour cette nuit depuis des années

et rien, ni le soleil, ni la pluie,

ni les orages de l’amour, ni

 

ce vieux sac de larmes que l’on traîne

tous, avec son ombre dans la nuque,

rien n’a pu nous faire oublier le jour

et l’heure de la grande marée

 

qui monte dans les chambres

et roule sur le corps de rêveurs

comme un drap, rien, pas même

l’effroi d’être emportés vivants

 

au moment de tout recommencer.

La Perle

Peut-être que toi aussi au moment de partir

tu n’auras pas le temps de lacer tes chaussures

de prendre ton chapeau de boutonner ta veste

         — Dieu sait le temps qu’il fera —

 

Mais si tu te souviens de la perle roulant

sur la joue de ton père à son dernier moment

alors qu’à son oreille tu accrochais des grappes

        de mots cueillis un par un

 

sur l’arbre de l’enfance Si cette perle d’eau

n’a cessé de couler d’inonder ton rivage

te lavant du chagrin et du dernier souci

     Dieu fasse que ce soit elle

 

au moment de partir qui t’ouvre grand la porte

Two Poems

Translated from French by Kathryn Kimball

The Great Tide

And so we’d set the date

for this night years ago

and nothing, not the sun, nor the rain,

not the storms of love, not even

 

that old bag of tears we drag along

all of us, with its shadow at our necks,

nothing could make us forget the day

and the hour of the great tide

 

as it rises in our rooms

and rolls over the bodies of dreamers

like a sheet, nothing, not even

the fear of being carried away alive

 

to the moment it all begins again.

The Pearl

Maybe you too, at the moment of your leaving,

won't have time to tie your shoes

grab your hat button your jacket

       — God only knows what the weather will be—

 

But if you remember the pearl rolling down

your father's cheek during his last moments

while into his ear you let fall clusters

     of words gathered one by one


hung on the tree of childhood, if that pearl of water

has not stopped flowing to flood your own shore

washing away your sorrow and every last care

        God grant that it may be that pearl

 

at the moment of your leaving that opens wide the door

  • Guy Goffette was born in 1947 in Jamoigne, on the French-Belgian border. He settled in nearby Harnoncourt, raised a family, and after extensive travels made his home in Paris. Poet, teacher, novelist, essayist, and editor at Éditions Gallimard for many years, Goffette was considered one of the most accomplished poets in France. Praising Goffette in a bilingual edition of his poems appearing in 2007, Yves Bonnefoy declared him “without question one of the best poets of the present moment in France.”

    Goffette published his first book of poems in 1969 when he was twenty-two; he has received the Prix Mallarmé (1989), the Grand prix de poésie de la Société des gens de lettres (1999), the Grand prix de poésie de l’Académie française (2001) and the Prix Goncourt for lifetime achievement (2010). His most recent volume of poems, Paris à ma porte appeared in March 2023. Pain perdu, the collection in which these two poems are included, was published in 2020. 

    Guy Goffette died on March 28, 2024, at the age of 76.

  • Kathryn Kimball grew up in Alabama, has a Ph.D. in English Literature and has taught writing and nineteenth-century literature. Her publications include a 2021 chapbook, a book of poetry accepted for publication in 2025, and inclusion in various journals. She has published translations of several poets writing in French, including Goffette. She is a yoga practitioner and lives in New York City.