Original Title: "Les anglais bombardaient les ponts"
Year: 1970
The English were bombing the bridges
It was my father's wedding
The dance, the shouts, the wine harvests it was the war
The wedding night, on foot, exhausted very late
at the house of priest's aunt
My father who never went
to overturn girls in the vines
who looks at my mom and all the time that has passed
The straw that goes away in the Loire's current
To the bridges of Cé²
My father prepares plans
My mother claims he is mad
about an house even closer to the sun
"Your mother would be fine there on her knitting
In a garden very beautiful very sweet"
"But I do not like knitting"
My mother talks about the children
She says words about love and time
Like a cracked glass and who smiles
and living, it lasts a long time
And the father do you think to your son
with whom you talk of women
Your sister she'd better take a lover
God will forgive her the flower in the eye
We should not tell mother anything
Comon, the good lord's church is too small now
too many silences in mother's boxes
all-night vigils we'll make in two go the next moving out
It'll be a morning of fall
And rain on the yards
I'll be somewhere toward Bordeaux on a train
With strangers I talk and I'll not be home tomorrow
You are in your car, you think,
you father is alone at the rendez-vous.
The daylight is pale suddenly
Of your life you are ashame, a phone call
and it's not a lot
Your father is very far from his way
He walks alone and he is being talked to
He thinks about pictures where his son was there
The son, he says that he doesn't believe in god
but mother's face...
And the father so says to the good lord,
for once I agree
and if it's from you if he comes I'll not say anything
let him give me discreetly a few recent news from mother
It's a winter night very late
It's raining outside, the hotel is empty
The night manager has a very sweet smile
He says "my mother lends him her shawl"
And "What room do you want?"
²Les Ponts-de-Cé is a town in France
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