Jacques Bertin - Baudelaire - Invitation to travel

Sang by J. Bertin
Text: Charles Baudelaire (1857)
Year: 1957 (Ferré's version), 1985 (Bertin's version)

Keith Waldrop's translation (not mine)

Child, Sister, think how sweet to go out there and live together! To love at leisure, love and die in that land that resembles you! For me, damp suns in disturbed skies share mysterious charms with your treacherous eyes as they shine through tears.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

Gleaming furniture, polished by years passing, would ornate our bedroom; rarest flowers, their odors vaguely mixed with amber; rich ceilings; deep mirrors; an Oriental splendor—everything there would address our souls, privately, in their sweet native tongue.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

See on these canals those sleeping boats whose mood is vagabond; it’s to satisfy your every desires that they come from the world’s end. —Setting suns reclothe fields, the canals, the whole town, in hyacinth and gold; the world falling asleep in a warm light.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

My translation:

My child, my sister, think about the sweetness of going out there and live together!
To love at leisure, to love and die in that land that resembles you!
The wet suns of those scrambled skies for my mind have the charms
So mysterious of your treacherous eyes shining through their tears.

There, everything is nothing else but order and beauty: luxury, calm and delight

Gleaming furniture, polished by the years, would ornate our bedroom;
the rarest flowers, mixing their odors with the vague scents of the amber
The rich ceilings; the deep mirrors; the Oriental splendor
everything there would speak to the soul, in secret, in their sweet native tongue.

There, everything is nothing else but order and beauty: luxury, calm and delight

See on these canals sleeping those boats whose mood is vagabond;
it’s to satisfy your every desires that they come from the world’s end.
—Setting suns embellish the fields, the canals, the whole town,
in hyacinth and gold; the world is falling asleep in a warm light.
There, everything is nothing else but order and beauty: luxury, calm and delight

Léo Ferré's version:

Barbara - The hurt of living

Original Title: "Le Mal de Vivre".
Year: 1965

It doesn't warn when it arrives
It comes from far
It walked from shore to shore
The mug wedge-shaped
And then one morning, on waking
It's almost nothing
But it's there, it makes you sleepy
At the small of the back

The hurt of living
The hurt of living
That you have to live
Live what may

We can carry it accross our shoulder
Or like a jewel on the hand
Like a flower at the buttonhole
Or just at the tip of the breast
It's not necessarily misery
It's not Valmy, It's not Verdun
But it's tears at the eyelids
For the day that dies, the day that comes

The hurt of living
The hurt of living
That you have to live
Live what may

Whether you are from Rome or America
Whether you are from London or Peking
Whether you are from Egypt or Africa
Or from the Porte Saint-Martin
We all make the same prayer
We all go the same way
How long it's when you have to do it
with your hurt at the small of the back

As hard as they want to understand us
Those who came to us empty handed
We do not want to hear them anymore
We can't, we can't take it anymore
And all alone in the silence
Of a night that doesn't end anymore
Here we are suddenly thinking about
Those who never came back

From the hurt of living
Their hurt of living
They had to live
Live what may

And without warning, it arrives
It comes from far
It walks from shore to shore
The laugh on the corner
And then one morning, on waking up
It's almost nothing
But it's there, it amazes you
At the small of the back

The joy of living
The joy of living
Oh, come live it
Your joy of living

Jacques Brel - That lot there

Original Title: "Ces gens-là"
Year: 1965

At first, at first
There is the eldest
He who is like a melon
He who has a big nose
He who doesn't remember his name, Mister
So much he drinks
or so much he has drunk
Who does nothing of his ten fingers
but he who is worn out
He who has had it
and thinks himself the king

Who gets drunk every night
With bad wine
but who you find back in the morning
In the church kipping
Stiff like a protrusion
White like an Easter's candle
And then who stammers
And who has the eye that strays

Have to tell you, Mister,
that in that family you don't think, Mister
you don't think
you pray

And then, there is the other one
Carrots in his hair
Who has never seen a comb
Who is as nasty as he comes
What's more he'd give his shirt
to poor happy people
Who married the Denise
A girl from the town
Well, from another town

And it's not over
Who makes his small businesses
With his small hat, 
with his small coat,
with his small car
Who would like to look much
But who doesn't look much at all
You should not play the rich
when you do not have a coin

Have to tell you, Mister,
that in that family you don't live, Mister
you don't live
you cheat

And then, there are the others
The mother who says nothing or nonsense
And from the evening to the morning
Under his nice apostle face
And in his wooden frame
There is the father's mustache
Who died from a "sliding"
And who looks at his herd
Eating the cold soup
And it makes big "slurps"
And it makes big "slurps"

And then, there is the so old one
Who never ends vibrating
And we wait for her to kick the bucket
As she is the one with the dough
And we don't even listen
what her poor hands tells

Have to tell you, Mister,
that in that family you don't talk, Mister
you don't talk
you count

And then, and then, and then
There is Frieda who is beautiful like a sun
And who loves me the same as I love Frieda
Even that we often tell eachothers
that we'll have an house
with plenty of windows
with almost no walls
and that we'll live in it
and it'll be pleasant to be there
And if it's not sure
It's still "maybe"
Because the others do not want
Because the others do not want

The others they say like that:
That she is too beautiful for me
That I'm barely good to cut cats throats
I've never killed cats
Or it's been a while
Or I've forgotten
Or they stank
Anyway they do not want
Anyway they do not want

Sometimes, when we see each others
I swear, it's not on purpose
With her wetting eyes
She says she'll leave
She says she'll follow me
Then for a moment
For a moment only
then, me, I believe her, Mister
For a moment
For a moment only
Because in that family, Mister
You don't go away
You don't go away, Mister
You don't go away

But it is late, Mister
I have to go,
Home

Other version:

Barbara & Moustaki - The brown haired lady

Original Title: "La Dame Brune"
Year: 1967

For a long brown haired lady, I've invented
a song in the moonlight, a few verses
If she ever hears it, she'll know
that it is a love song for her and me

I'm the long brown haired lady that you are waiting for
I'm the long brown haired lady and I hear you
Sing again in the moonlight, I come toward you
your guitar, makeshift organ, guides my steps

Pierrot had lent me his pen that morning
I took the A from my makeshift guitar
I thought myself a poet by writing
the words going through my head like the wind

Pierrot had lent you his pen that night,
On your makeshift guitar you took the A
And I took you for a poet by listening
to the words going through your head like the wind

I dressed the dark haired lady, in my thoughts
with pieces of a veil of mist and of dew
I made her bed against my skin for her to feel at home
Sheltered and warm between my hands

Dressed with a veil of mist and dew
I'm the tall brown haired lady of your thought
Sing again in the moonlight, I come toward you
Through the mounts and dunes, I hear your voice

For a long brown haired lady, I've invented
a song in the moonlight, a few verses
I know she'll hear it one day, who knows maybe tomorrow
so that this love song ends well

Good morning, I'm the brown haired lady, I walked so much
Good morning, I'm the brown haired lady, I found you
Make me a place in the hollow of your bed, I'll be fine
In the warmth and well sheltered against your waist

Serge Reggiani - And then

Original Title: "Et puis"
Year: 1968

And then...and I was going to say: already
Childhood is getting distant
like a country from which we depart from
I only barely see the shore anymore
My love, my love

With you, I get under way then
to somewhere else, to something else
On board of my forties
And I take you away
over there in an image

I love you, you
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

And then...like we go to the country
when we would have lead a riotous life
We'll go to the sixties
In that house I love
In Provence
My love, my love

We would have made love and then
other boys well before the old days
And the old nights
If you behave well
You'll receive images

I love you, you
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

And then, but it's not tomorrow
The evening will have to come
I'll go on the path
where the bitch is waiting for us
One by one
My love, my love

When I'll be up in the clouds
It's somewhere else, it's yet something else
But without you you know
I'll be alone, there
In the other image

I love you, myself
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

Another version:

Barbara - Say, when will you be back

Original Title: "Dis, quand reviendras-tu?"
Year: 1964

For how many days, for how many nights
For how long have you been gone again
You told me : "This time, it's the last trip
for our torn hearts, it's the last wrecking
In the spring you'll see I'll be back
The spring, it's pretty to talk about love,
We'll go together see the florished gardens
and will stroll in the streets of Paris"

Say, when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
That all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
That all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.

Spring has fled for a long time already,
creak the dead leaves, burn the wood fires,
To see Paris so beautiful at this end of fall,
Suddenly I grow languid, I dream, I shiver,
I reel, I capsize, and like the old refrain,
I go, I come, I veer, I'm turning around, I'm dragging myself,
Your image is haunting me, I'm whispering to you
And I'm lovesick and I'm yearning for you.

Say, when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
That all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
That all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.

Even though I still love you, even though I always love you,
Even though you are the only one I love, even though I love you of love,
If you do not understand that you must come back
I will make of us both my most beautiful memories
I'll take the road again, the world marvels me
I'll warm myself up at another sun,
I'm not of those girls who die of sorrow
I do not have the virtue of sailors' wives

Say, but when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
How all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
How all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.

Jacques Brel - Orly

Original Title: "Orly"
Year: 1977

There are more than two thousand people
and I only see those two
Rain soldered them to one another, it seems.
There are more than two thousand people
and I only see those two
And I know that they are talking
He must tell her "I love you!"
She must tell him "I love you!"
I think they are busy not promising anything to one another.
Those two are too slean to be dishonest
There are more than two thousand people
and I only see those two
And suddenly, he cries
He cries hard
All surrounded as they are
by sweaty adipose
and hope guzzlers
pointing the nose at them.
But those two torn people
gorgeous from sorrow
abandon to dogs
the achievement of judging them

Life doesn't make gifts
And for God's sake, it's sad
Orly, on a Sunday,
With or Without Bécaud

And now they cry
I mean both of them
Earlier it was him
When I was saying "he"
As embedded as they are
they do not hear anything no more
but the sobs of the other one
And then
And then infinitely
Like two bodies that pray
infinitely slowly
Those two bodies part
And as they break up
Those two bodies tear each other
And I swear to you that they are screaming
And then, they pull themselves together
become one again
become the fire again
And then, tear each other again
Hold each other by the eyes
And then, while stepping back
like the sea recedes,
they consummate the farewell
He slobbers a few words
waves a vague hand
And suddenly, he runs
Runs without turning back
And then, he disapears
Eaten up by the stairs.

Life doesn't make gifts
And for God's sake, it's sad
Orly, on a Sunday,
With or Without Bécaud

And then, he disapears,
eaten up by the stairway
And she, she stays there,
Heart stretched to the sides, mouth opened
Without a shout, without a word
She knows of her death
She just crossed it
Here, she turns around
and turns around again
Her arms goes down to the ground
That's it! She is a thousand years old
The door is closed again
Here she is without light
She turns on herself
And already she knows
She'll always turn
She has lost men before
but there, she is losing love
Love told her
here comes the uselessness again
She'll live on projects
that will only wait
She is fragile again
Before being for sale
I'm here, I follow her
I don't dare anything for her
whom the crowd nibbles
like a mundane fruit.

Brel mentions Bécaud for his song about Orly's airport: Dimanche à Orly

Monique Morelli - Aragon - We play the man

Original Title: "On fait l'homme"
Year: 1966

We think ourselves free when we only imitate. We play the man
We want in this huge and insipid antics
to read we do not know which pointless adventure
when simply all the ways lead to Rome
When each of our steps is writen beforehand

Look at the young people and what they drag along
The superstition clinging to their steps
like a dead branch and like to the bottom
of a dismasted boat, the song of the siren
against what nothing helps not even compass

Look at those young people. What pushes them
like that toward the sandbanks, the shallows?
They had after all nothing new but the sweet little face
Them who were swaggering earlier. They all go
where the childhood dreams fall apart in the end

God, look at yourselves, small ones, in the mirrors
You have the hair messy and the eye lost
You are ready to do everything: obey, kill, believe
People like you the century has its drawers full of
You are sold up by the bucketful and it's very well sold

You are the odd-job flesh; A sort of
common material, a low-cost brick
With you no need to pull one's punches
You are this food that the crows take away
And your dreams, the wolves make short work of them

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Dominique A - The New Memory

Original Title: "La Mémoire Neuve"
Year: 1995

My memory has
has deserted me
Finally, I will
enjoy everything without
regretting anything.
Emancipated the future
from the memory

Inevitably, it didn't last
The memory came back to me but
I had an intuition that it was
not mine that I found again.

As a few memories
overcame me I doubted
that they ever belonged to me
them that were streaming without talking

But as they weighed
less than nothing
And that this memory didn't have
any trace of lucky or bad day
Wonderfully, it'd suit me

I who believed it calm
Right when it clung on to me
shortly I believed
it would be able to spare me
the resentments and the bad wine

And today I'm still staggering
under the blow. It really got me
Of course it revealed me everything since
about the heavy past that fell on me

My real memory
would reapper
It'd laugh loudly at me

The other in any case
tightly stowed
Is the patron of my every steps
And I do not recognize myself
Back curved and eyes lowered
Those eyes that are sweeping the floor
Probably for the first time

Barbara - My most beautiful love story

Original Title: "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour"
Year: 1966

As far as it is returning to me
the shadow of my old loves
As far as the first date

At the time of my first sorrows
I was barely fifteen years old then
White heart, scratches on the knees

That it was - I was precocious -
tender child's love
or the bites of a mad love

As far as I can remember
If I have said "I love you" since then
My most beautiful love story is you

It's true I didn't behave
And I turned many pages
Without reading them, white, and then nothing on them

It's true, I didn't behave
And my warriors of passage
Barely seen, already gone

But through their faces
it was already your image
It was you already and baren heart

I was packing my luggages again
and pursuing my mirage
My most beautiful love story is you

On the long road, leading up to you
On the long road, I was going with a crazy heart
December's wind was freezing at my neck
No matter December if it was for you

How long the road was
but I walked it, the road
The one leading up to you

And I'm not a perjurer
if this evening I swear to you
that for you I'd have done it on my knees

There would have required way more
than just some bad apostles
than winter or snow in my neck

For me to lose patience
And I calmed my violence
My most beautiful love story is you

But so many winters and falls
Nights, days and noone
You were never at the rendez-vous

And of you, becoming discouraged
Suddenly the rage grabbed me
My god, how much I needed you

To the hell with you
Others opened me their doors
Happy, I went far away from you

Yes I've been unfaithful to you
But I was coming back to you anyway
My most beautiful love story is you

I've cried tears
but how sweet it was to me, oh so sweet
that first smile from you

And for a tear, coming from you
I cried of love
Do you remember?

It was an evening in september,
you came to wait for me
Here exactly, do you remember it?

Looking at you smiling
Loving you without saying anything
It's at that moment that I suddenly understood

I had reached the end of my journey
And I put my luggages down
You were there at the rendez-vous

No matter what can be said about it
I wanted to tell you
Tonight I thank you for yourself

No matter what can be said about it
I came to tell you
My most beautiful love story is you

Live version:

Studio version:

Jacques Bertin - Jean-Max Brua - Dawn on the botanic garden

Jacques Bertin's version:

Original Title: "L'aube sur le jardin des plantes"
Text: Jean-Max Brua
Year: 1976

This day is warm like the wind
On her left cheek the shadow slips
And you are looking for words for her
That are like smooth grass snakes
Coming thick and fast in memory
The dawn on the botanical garden
And the shock of the trash cans
At the end of the street the men are cold
The naked monkeys shouts things of jungle
To the old blue ass monkey
Sitting in the cement tree

She leans like the day when
She came back to you from London
My sweetheart at the hollow of the eyes
My slow seaweed, my return
She leans over love
Breasts in the shadow of the hair
The first train is starting
at the end of the street the day is grey
And you gamble your fragile love
And you are scared, you might lose her
and you listen to the day creaking

And you want her to call you
And that she leans like that forever
My warm belly, my beauty
My shelter, my love
It's an autumn day
And you'd like to live without hate
Burst the stupid radios
and their vomited old tunes
She gets up, she is cold, it smells the street
The day is grey, you do not forget...
You do not forget

Original version by Jean-Max Brua:

Jacques Bertin - Do not talk

Original Title: "Ne parlez pas"
Year: 1972

Do not talk about unknown lands
Do not talk about living another life
Do not stand on your feet to see another world
There is this collar with every move, it strangles you

Talk about the pain of this bitter land
Where crows watch over the seed
Teach yourself to live back pinned down
This knife hurting you let it be a train

Accustom your eyes to a powerful hatred
just like the weapons in the attics piled up
Motionless under the smashed in crates

A hatred like a naked woman, cold and superb
A hatred tenacious and blue, a light
A strength, a running water, a train thrown to the south
A hatred attentive and self-assured
A hatred that knows how to listen, hold back and knows how to wait
The hatred be for those who are accomplices to the crows
Those who possess the word and sell it
The frivolous and the show-offs, the entertainers and their songs
Those who put flowers on your chains, those who flatter you

Listen! The night talks, the night beats
Water fishes, fears, tears, reversed flowers
Listen! Your life is here, opened in two, it's groaning softly
Put the neck on the road and hold back your terror
Talk for your friends, sitting in a circle
Talk for those who drive in the night
Talk as if the whole world was here
Gathered under you eyelids like before the hearth
Talk for me, tell me the name of sorrow
That sob that dampens the windows of the cities
Tell me about the endless staircase and the anger
Tell me your name, your first name and who loves you
And that muzzled singing by the garrulous radios
It shines at the bottom of our pockets like a penkife
It seeps on the walls, it turns the cracks blue

The muzzled singing, the song always, the human's song
It talks about us, it gives us weapons
It sharpens the gates, it opens the knives
We hear it it's the noise of the steps in the subway corridors

It's the appalling breath of the dawn in the stations
That song like a Sunday at the exit of the churches
The wind in the girl's skirts lifted up
The hatred with love mingled, the revived song
It carries us forward of ourselves, it waits, it exults

It talks to you, leaning in your ear
You answer it and your heart beats like a drum
The words go in the carmine vessels of the earth
An arm is resting on your arm that says "Listen !"

Jacques Bertin - Where you are, you are fine.

Original Title: "Où tu es, tu es bien"
Year: 1984

Where you are, you are fine
with your happiness in a sling
On your skin the rain slips
And your sex is drenched
You exhibit your chest
Provocative and frozen
In my memory
you're beautiful like a marble

Henceforth I'm dead
I wander in my maze
On the thread of your voice
You are alone, you scare yourself
The night, you go, obscene
but for noone and noone
knows nor takes you
except me in your thoughts
Violent and vague

The time passing by in the mind
where you run away from me, shoots pain in me
And I made of you the object that thinks
which abolishes itself by giving itself
I was prostituting you as a docile Adonis
Oh immense whore
Lost and proud and tense
Betting your sex and your life

Where you are, are you fine?
with your angst in a sling
On your skin, clothes
dress you but you are cold
You do not dare that laugh anymore
which would destroy your belly like a plaster
You mumble in your palace
in your disaster and
jerk off!

Someone made the misfortune enter the happy house
the silence was made, the wells dried up
At the end of the parc, the house gives way under the brambles
The evening, ghosts stand there
tears too.

Where you are, you are fine
In my head, in my agressivity
On your skin, the rain slips
and flatters you with its hands
You move forward in the night
white like a spasm
In my memory where I keep you
You are fine.

Jacques Bertin - Louis Aragon - Now that the youth

Original Title: "Maintenant que la jeunesse"
Text: Louis Aragon
Music: L. Leonardi
Year: 1966 (Morelli's version), 1982 (Bertin's version)

Now that the youth
goes out on the blue windows
Now that the youth
Unconscious, betrayed me

Now that the youth
You remember, remember it
Now that the youth
Sings the spring to others
Now that the youth
Turns away its lilac eyes

Now that the youth
Is not here or there anymore
Now that the youth
On other light paths

Now that the youth
Follows a foreign cloud
Now that the youth
Ran away, generous thief
Leaving me my right of primogeniture
And the silver of my hair.

It's a fine day as to not believe in it
It's a fine day like never
What a weather, what a weather witout memory
One does not know how to see anymore
nor to get up nor to sit down
It's a fine day like never

It's an unnatural weather
Like the sky in paintings
Like the oblivion of tortures
It's a fine day like never

Fresh, like water under the row
A weather strong like a woman
A weather to damn one's soul
It's a fine day like never

A weather to laugh and run
A weather to not die
A weather to fear for the worst
It's a fine day like never

Monique Morelli's version:

Marc Ogeret's version:

Hélène Martin's version:

Les Compagnons de la chanson's version:



All poems written by Louis Aragon

Monique Morelli - Ronsard - I love you

Original Title: "Je vous aime"
Year: 1978

If that's what being in love is, Madam, and during the day and during the night,
to dream, to imagine, to think of the means to please you,
to forget all things and not wanting to do anything else,
but to adore and to serve the beauty who harms me:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

If that's what being in love is, to follow an happiness that is fleeing me,
to lose myself and to be solitary,
To suffer lots of harm, to fear a lot and to remain quiet,
to weep, cry for mercy and see myself rejected as a result:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

If that's what being in love is, to live more in you than in myself,
to hide with a joyful forehead an extreme languor,
to feel deep in the soul an uneven combat,
If that's how it's to love: furious, I love you:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

All poems written by Ronsard

Jacques Bertin - Ballad

Original Title: "Ballade"
Year: 1985

It's nothing more than a detail, a detail
The moon is above the pond
I only have a very ordinary life
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me

By turns,
I listen to the night
I listen to the wind getting lost
A shouting weathercock
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me

Creaks, chuckles, smokes the night
Time will pass, I have time
Branches to branches, the oblivion climbs up
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me

Lonely and cold companion
The moon is above the pond
I only have a very ordinary life
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me
At the end of everything, nothing is wainting for me

Léo Ferré - Aragon - I love you so much

Original Title: "Je t'aime tant"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1961

My dark love of bitter orange
My song of waterlock and of wind
My piece of shadow
where the sea comes,
To die while dreaming.

My beautiful month of August which sky rains
Stars on the calm mounds.
My daydreaming with palm walls
Where the air is blue

My golden arms, my weak wonders
Let my thirst and hunger be revived
Necklace, necklace of the endless evenings
Where the heart stays awake

Do we know what happens
It may well be soon after
That the coat will be thrown
upon my face

Cut my throat and the peonies
Quick bring my wine, my blood
To please her like in passing
Are doing the oats

I have so little time left
To go at the bottom of myself
And to shout: "God, how I love you
I love you so much, I love you so much".

All poems written by Louis Aragon
Hélène Martin's version (more complete & named The Black Song/La Chanson Noire):

Jacques Bertin - I barged in

Original Title: "Je débarquais"
Year: 1968

I barged in from a world where desire makes the man²
I had at the bottom of the heart a love rage
So I built for myself castles in the air*
for an infante and a kiss

The heavy myself which lied in my luggage
Settled forcefully inside your house
and I crossed the sea and I crossed the ford
and here is Spain reached

I received thousand kisses from the wild infante
In a waterless desert I planted an orchard
A river is running nowadays under your lips
The water spring and your rose bushes.

I fought well against the icy night
I impregnated the sand where you were laying
I drove my knife in, I searched your wound
And you were bleeding: I was saved

But here we are tonight, silent, face to face
Here I'm in front of you, far from you, tired
How dry our eyes are, our lips without kisses
Lovers we are parted

So the charm is broken, the fairy becomes woman again
I was wrong then if you touch the fairy
The enchantment goes away, I find the fairy back
Thick alas and separated

I start off again on your road to meet you again
patiently, lengthily, like one weaves a basket
Like the rain revives a forgotten garden
Like the rain I'm coming, I love you

*Castles in Spain in french hence the relation with the infant and Spain later on
²Play on words with the expression "L'habit ne fait pas le moine" (The outfit doesn't make the monk/man)

Jean-Baptiste Clément - The time of the cherries

André Dassary's version:
And a more modern take by Noir Désir:

Original Title: "Le temps des cerises"
Year: 1868

When we'll sing the time of the cherries
And joyful nightingale and mocking blackbird
Will all be in a festive mood.
Beauties will have folly in the head
and the lovers some sun in the heart.
When we'll sing the time of the cherries
The mocking blackbird will whistle way better

But it's quite short : the time of the cherries
Where we both go pick while dreaming
drop earrings...
Love cherries with vermilion's robes
Falling under the leaf in drops of blood
But it is quite short : the time of the cherries,
Coral earrings we pick up while dreaming!

When you'll be at the time of the cherries
If you're afraid of love sorrows :
Avoid the beauties!
I who do not fear the cruel sorrows
I'll not live without suffering one day...

When you'll be at the time of the cherries
You too will have love sorrows!
I'll always love the time of the cherries
It's from that time that I keep in my heart
An open wound!

And Lady Fortune, being offered to me
will never be able to ease my pain....
I'll always love the time of the cherries
And the memory I keep in my heart!

Many many versions exists, here are the main ones:
Réda Caire's version:

Yves Montand's version:

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Mouloudji's version

Charles Trenet's version:

Tino Rossi's version:

Jacques Bertin - I am the one who runs

Original Title: "Je suis celui qui court"
Year: 1970

I am the one who runs beside you when you glide in the grass
You feel him but do not see him, you flee, you hear him breathe
And the branches of the trees are the ears of the days
when water covers you with kisses
When you come in the damp and warm earth, your tenderness
I'm the one who comes with his hand to dry you
and you lower your head, his shoulder is a basket

I'm the one who knows you when you flee to the end of the world
And you always come back to his place, he doesn't know you're there
And you are behind the cupboard, you see him, you're in the shadow
And he breathes heavily he doesn't know you're there.

Now, do you know if he's here when you're hiding and watch him intently
He went outside and the door to the garden didn't creak
His body is bent over the table, he is sick with papers
He is sick with sun, he is under the South of the worlds

He is like the broken stem of summer dragging on the ground
The sap flows and he hears like a numerous humming.
He is stained with wine among splinters of knocked over tables.
He is below his own body and in the teared up tablecloth,

He is on the ground on his knees with all his fingers crushed.
And the kicks of the sun made his belly burst.
Mad with pain he scratches, yells, and there, pierced,
He is like the wind that comes dying in the marshes
And who has blood trickles and who hides and who rocks itself
Who is searching for itself and ignoring itself and breaks up and knows itself.

Oh my love we are of those who can say they know each other
All things which find themselves and ignore themselves and know themselves
And noone would have a grip on us, on our love, on anxiety
We are like air and wind, bound flesh to flesh
Who is never really its own body, always before, always maybe,
Both always together and never ever meet
In the water, our smooth youth comes and lays on the surface
a breath which is our love and we'll never talk.

Dominique A - The Horizon

Original Title: "L'horizon"
Year: 2006

"We won't go any further" the captain tells you.
Too many obsticles today to reach the horizon
Exhausted whales are moaning on the strand
Their blood covers mouths like as many hooks

Like as many hills blocking out the horizon
of crests insensitive to the plains' adagio
"I'm really sorry" the captain tells you
And you feel he talks true and he has a good heart

Since then, the mouth ruby-red, a woman with a harpoon
Who enters inside your walls and bleeds the whales
makes you for months on disdain the horizon
and when you meet him, look down on the captain.

When you go home, you tell yourself you feel fine
The lie is everywhere infiltrated in your veins
so much you like tasting the blood of the whale
that is brimming over the lips of the woman with an harpoon

But one day on your sleeve pulls the captain
Eyes protruding, he tells you: "let's leave".
It's time to get out of the queens' sleep.
Because noone awaits you as much as the horizon.

It's Lop Nur that is hoping for you, The Inlandsis that is calling for you
The Sierra Nevada that is shouting your name at night
And it's the Big Blue that enhances the sky
Each of them asking for you and offering you the horizon

But that one escapes you, stopped in its momentum
through aggressive tops, deep valleys
stone hearted cities with extravagant shapes
See, the beard is growing on you and your pace is slowing down

And you hear afar the moans of the whales
which before ending on the strand have probably
known this horizon about which only the captain
still hopes for both of you that you cross its path

But one day about the silence raising in the vicinity
As your eyes come unstuck, you know that you have been left out
Alone with your old dream which shadow is a vulture
that under your rags feels the flesh drying up

And as in slow circles, he comes to engage you
the scenery flattens, the curves come apart
Everything frees itself, yes, no doubt weary of waiting for you
it's it coming toward you; it is there: the horizon

Rue Ketanou - Bride of the water

Original Title: "La Fiancée de l'Eau"
Year: 2000

Dead from drought, the bride of the water
married her blood to the stream's
Prince, put away your white sheet,
Prince, put away your white sheet,
Prince, put away your white sheet.
Prince, put away your white sheet

It'll never be the reddening flag of her virginity.
Look at her honor,
look at her honor,
look at her honor,

Look at her honor, fleeing away through death
Look, sad thief, absence is inside her body
You can dig the earth,
you can dig the earth,
you can dig the earth

you can dig the earth with all your remorses
Dig, to hell, dig, dig, again
No, you'll have nothing from her
No, you'll have nothing from her
No, you'll have nothing from her

No, you'll have nothing from her
There is nothing left to take
She threw herself to the sky
You begin to understand
that not everything is for sale
that not everything is for sale
that not everything is for sale

Hélène Martin - Louis Aragon - The Fire

Original Title: "Le feu"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1966

My God, my God, it doesn't die out
All my forest, I'm here burning
I mistook this fire for dusk
I believed my heart to be at its last step

I was always waiting for the day to become ash
I read getting old where wicker breaks
I watched out for the moment after the blaze
I listened to the song of ashes, going down

I was of the knife, of the age throat cut
I brought my fingers where living bleeds me
Measuring this way the end of my rule
The little I've left and the nothing I have

But as pain ought to end
Sometimes I took my contentment from it
Betting on the shadow and the moment
Where the door opening, tears the dream.

But as much as I want to be done with it,
Look in this body for the alarm and alert
The absence and the night, the abyss and the loss
of which I bear in me the deep denial

There is a wind rising there that is something of a miracle
The approach of you making me spring
I've never had in my life so much
even in your arms, today vertigo

The pain of loving perpetuates the flame
In me the fire deploys its devastations
To nothing served, nor time, nor age
My soul, my soul, where are you taking me?
Where are you taking me?

All poems written by Louis Aragon