Goffette, "To Cavafy"

Such impatience, and for what, if tomorrow
is only a little boat with no sail or oars,
a bridge over nothing? Think of the old man
of Alexandria, of his treasures squirreled

away in a drawer with keys, leftover flakes of
tobacco, the weary portrait of a deposed princeling.
All it took was a car horn honking in the street,
a livelier step on the stairway

to wake up the room, the angel's voluptuous
body, the knife-sharp fragile
beauty of love, and his voice in the darkness
like salt

thrown on a wound, in passing.


Guy Goffette
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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