Bonne Nouvelle by John Arthur Sweet
mardi, le 16 mai, l’an deux mille vingt-trois
à environ treize heures trente-deux minutes
and I’m in the Paris metro when I hear
a disembodied voice intone, Bonne Nouvelle,
and the carriage jerks and shudders and slows
who knows what form it might take, this bonne nouvelle,
si bonne that it must be announced baldly,
sans nuance, before we’re even quite here,
in the next station, while we’re still hurtling,
innocently, through the Ligne 9 atmosphere
I start off modest: fares will be reduced
on the Paris metro. That’s the bonne nouvelle,
visit www. for details
then I escalate rapidly: peace in Ukraine
or: cellphones won’t work henceforth, there’s a hitch,
and we need to look at one another again
then I go richly metaphysical
so this is how it manifests, I think,
no heav’ns op’ning, no trumpets sounding,
just a brief énoncé, in French, en route
from a queer bookstore to Le Corbusier’s
house that shares his vision of Paradise
as a rational abode, uncluttered,
unified, filled with light, and purposeful
in my father’s house are many mansions,
and here we go, it’s happening, between
Strasbourg–St-Denis and Grands Boulevards,
time for some interior decorating
assuming I find myself at the end
of a charitable interpretation
who’d have thought, after all this time
all the unfulfilled promises, the malaise
a mansion to inhabit, with cool friends
but as pregnant seconds accumulate
and we drift into another station
whose name doesn’t quite percolate, I think:
perhaps I’m being overly ambitious
maybe the bonne nouvelle is nothing more
than the fact I’m here, that it’s not hell, and
this spell I’m in leaves me free to speculate
just exactly what kind of bonne nouvelle
it would be that I’d most appreciate
John Arthur Sweet is a Montreal-based writer/performer, mostly of theatrical monologues. In May, he was an invited artist at PLU. He began "Bonne Nouvelle" during his five-day visit to Paris, and shared an initial version of it at the PLU Open Mic. His website is johnarthursweet.online.
Photo credit: Lux Praguensis
Posted on December 14th 2023