Two Poems by Guy Goffette
Art by Pinyu Hwang
Translator’s 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.
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
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
