Curfew

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

I

What matters it if the gate be guarded

By curfew hiding vocabulary;

I fashion this poem of words recalled

Though others flit for cover through my mind,

Absent from their old familiar places,

Like friends who’ve left their shadows here behind.

Forgotten words hide but 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 old familiar places

Like friends who’ve left their shadows here behind.

Words forgotten scarper—I admit it—

But then show up, with dutiful faces,

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

Those friends, though, 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 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