Curfew

Que voulez-vous la porte était gardée—Paul Éluard, « Couvre-feu » (1942)

I

What matters it if the gate be guarded

By curfew sheltering stammered cant,

I fashion this from remembered lingo,

Its words that fleet for cover in my mind,

Dislodged from their long familiar places,

Like old friends leaving their shadows behind,

Forgotten words that hide for a moment,

Then pop up again to show their faces

Unbidden, from the blind to which they went.

Those friends are gone, alas, for good. They’re dead.

II

What matters it if the gate be guarded,

Where curfew conceals vocabulary?

I fashion this poem from words recalled,

Though others flit for cover through my mind,

Absent from their long familiar places

Like old friends leaving their shadow behind.

Words forgotten scarper—I admit it—

But then show up, with dutiful faces,

Unbidden, from the blind to which they’d fled.

Those friends are gone for good, they're beastly dead.

Petra, Mytilene (Lesbos), 1966: Peter Rorich, Rab Shiell, Alexander Marais du Toit, and Michael von Lilienstein Tapscott, with the writer, PRD, on the right, the sole survivor of this group today. Photo by John Berryman.

Needless to say, Paul Éluard wrote of an entirely different sort of curfew in his famous poem, which inspired a generation in France.

Tuesday, April 15, 2025