Jacques Brel - The Lock Keeper

jacques brel - l'éclusier
Original Title: "L'éclusier"
Year: 1968

The bargemen see me getting older
I see the bargemen getting older
We play the game of the stupids
Where the motionless is the oldest
In my craft even during the summer
You have to travel eyes closed
It's not a small task to be a lock keeper

The bargemen know my mug
They tease me and they are in the wrong
Half sorcerer half drunkard
I cast a spell to everything that sings
In my craft, it's during the fall
You pick the apples and the drowned
It's not a small task to be a lock keeper

In its basket, a child squints
to see the fly that is on his nose
Mom purrs the time sighs
The cabbage sweats, the fire grumbles
In my craft, it's during the winter
That you think of the father who drowned himself
It's not a small task to be a lock keeper

Towards the spring, the bargewomen
Put on airs for me from their barge
I'd enjoy their games without this war
That roughed me up a little too much
In my craft, it's during the spring
One takes the time to drown oneself.

Studio version:

Monique Morelli - Aragon - Elsa's hands

Original Title: "Les Mains d'Elsa"
Text: Louis Aragon (1963)
Year: 1966

Give me your hands for the anxiety
Give me your hands of which I've dreamt so much
Of which I've dreamt so much in my loneliness
Give me your hands so that I'm saved.

When I take them at my own trap
of palm and fear, of haste and emotion
When I take them like a water of snow
that melts from everywhere in my own hands

Will you ever know what goes through me,
What overwhelms me and what invades me
Will you ever know what pierces me,
What I betrayed when I flinched

What the deep language says that way
That mute way of speaking of animal senses
Without mouth and without eyes, mirror without image
That simmer of loving that has no words

Will you ever know what the fingers think
of a prey held a moment between them.
Will you ever know what their silence,
a flash, would have known of unknown

Give me your hands for my heart to form there
for the world to go quiet there at least a moment
Give me your hands for my soul to sleep there
For my soul to sleep there eternally.

Marc Ogeret's version:

All poems written by Louis Aragon