Edith Piaf - Lovers for a day

Original title: "Les amants d'un jour"
Text: Claude Delécluse and Michèle Senlis
Music: Marguerite Monnot
Year: 1956

Me, I wipe the glasses at the back of the café
I have way too much to do to be able to dream
But in that setting, so banal you could cry
It seems to me that I still see them arrive

They arrived, holding each other by the hand
looking filled with wonder
Like two cherubs
Carrying the sun
They asked
With a tranquil voice
A roof to love one another
In the heart of the city
And I remember
That they looked with a melting look
At the hotel room with the yellowed wallpaper
And when I closed the door on them
There was so much sun in the bottom of their eyes
That it hurt me
That it hurt me

Me, I wipe the glasses at the back of the café
I have way too much to do to be able to dream
But in that setting, so banal you could cry
It's body against body that they have been found
We found them holding hands
Eyes closed up
On other mornings
Filled with sun
They have been laid
Joined and tranquil
In a digged bed
In the heart of the city
And I remember
Having closed in the early morning
The hotel room of the one day lovers
But they planted at the bottom of my heart
A piece of sun and so many colors
That it's hurting me so much
That it's hurting me so much

Me, I wipe the glasses at the back of the café
I have way too much to do to be able to dream
But in that setting, so banal you could cry
There is still outside: the "Room to rent".

It has been sung by other singers, an example below
Daniel Guichard's version:


And most importantly here is Piaf singing the song in an English version:

Jacques Brel - The song of Jacky

Original title: "La chanson de Jacky"
Year: 1965

Even if one day, in Knokke-Le-Zoute
I become, like I dread,
Singer, for declining women
Even if I sing to them "Mi Corazon"
With the bandoneoning voice
Of an Argentinian from Carcassonne

Even if people call me Antonio
That I burn my last fires
In exchange of a few gifts
Madam, I do what I can

Even if I get drunk on mead
To better be able to talk about virility
To grannies decorated
Like christmas trees

I know that in my drunkenography
Every night for pink elephants
I will sing my morose song
The one of the time when my name was Jacky

To be one hour, just one hour
To be one hour, one hour sometimes,
To be one hour, just during one hour
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and idiot at the same time

Even if one day in Macau
I become joint governor
Circled with languid women

Even if tired to be a singer
I became blackmailer²
And that it'd be the other ones who sing

Even if people call me the beautiful Serge
That I sell boats filled with opium
Whisky from Clermont-Ferrand
True gays and fake virgins
That I have a bank at each finger
And a finger in each country
That each country would be mine

I still know that every night
Alone at the back of my opium den
For a public made of old Chinese people
I will sing my own song
The one of the time when my name was Jacky

To be one hour, just one hour
To be one hour, one hour sometimes,
To be one hour, just during one hour
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and idiot at the same time

Even if one day in Paradise
I become, like I'd be surprised of it,
Singer for women with white wings
Even if I sing them Alleluhia
While regretting the time of down there
Where it's not sunday everyday

Even if I am called God the Father
The one who is in the phone book
Between Dieulefit³ and God bless you

Even if I let my beard grow
Even if still too much a sucker
I kill my heart and the pure spirit
wanting to console men

I know still that every night
I will hear in my Paradise
The angels, the Saints and Lucifer
sing to me the song of former times
The one of the time when my name was Jacky

To be one hour, just one hour
To be one hour, one hour sometimes,
To be one hour, just during one hour
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and idiot at the same time

² Master singer in french
³ Could be translated to Goddidit

Studio version:

Georges Brassens - The nuptial march

Original Title: "La marche nuptiale"
Year: 1957

Marriage for love, marriage for money
I have seen all kind of people getting married
People of low source, and men in high places
Supposed hairdresser, so-called notaries

Even though I would live up to the end of times
I'd always keep the happy memory
Of the day of poor wedding
when my father and my mother
Went to marry in front of Mr the Mayor

It's in a ox cart if one has to speak frankly
Pulled by the friends, Pushed by the parents,
That the old lovers made their nuptials
After a long time of love, a long time of betrothal

Nuptial procession outside of the ordinary order
The crowd look covetously us with a protuberant eye
We were contemplated by the futile world,
Which had never seen a wedding of that kind.

Here comes the wind which blows, taking away, heartbreak,
My father's hat and the altar boys
Here comes the rain which falls while well weighing its drops
As if to prevent the wedding at all cost

I will never forget the bride in tears
Rocking, like a doll, her big flower bouquet...
Me, to console her, me, with all my haughtiness,
On my harmonica, playing the great organs.

All the boys of honour, showing their fist to the sky
Were shouting, by Jupiter, the wedding goes on
By the disparaged men, by the annoyed gods
The wedding goes on and long live the bride

Jacques Bertin - That's it, it's this night

Original Title: "Voilà, c'est cette nuit"
Year: 1974

That's it. It's this night, you have been run over by a car
Goblin plaza you are losing your blood in front of four or five night owls
You notice that the agents are slow and that you are not afraid

Today, tuesday, your mom is ironing the linen
She has no news from you
You wouldn't have written much while saying a few not very clever verses
Aside in insolence and friendship you didn't have that many talents
You lived, you attended to the most urgent things first, you have lost your time

I have lost my time and my life attempting to be free
I have lived happily fighting between the silence and the difficult words
The ambulance I recognize it, it ressembles to my childhood bed
My older brother is next to me, he is playing harmonica to me
I am going to die at the hour I like, at the hour when I liked to live
The night I was watching over you my friends known and unknown
I penetrated between your closed eyelids in the warmth of the small boats
Or in your dreams which are to all the same and talk of justice

It's a nice hour to die and it's a nice place
Dawn is coming like a woman's belly in its folly of leaves
I spent my life getting ready for that moment
Younger brother of all the free men

Jean Ferrat - Louis Aragon - Guess

Original Title: "Devine"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1994

A big field of blue flax
among the black grapes
When, toward me, the wind
bends it trembling

A big field of blue flax
Which makes mirror to the sky
And it's me who trembles
To the bottom of my blood

Guess
Guess
Guess
Guess

A big field of blue flax
In the day, coming back
For a long time drags there
A mist of dreams

I am afraid to flush there
Unknown birds of which far away
The winged shadow
obscurely grows longer

Guess
Guess
Guess
Guess

A big field of blue flax
Of the color of the tears
Opened on a country
of which only love knows about

Where everything has the perfumes
the power, the charm
As if some kisses always
were wandering there

Guess
Guess
Guess
Guess

A big field of blue flax
of which it's the surprise
always to discover
A pure and deep water

Of its coat covering
Miraculously,
Is it a lake or the sea,
The shoulders of the world

Guess
Guess
Guess
Guess

A big field of blue flax
Which speaks, laughs and cries
I plunge and lose myself in there
Tell me, do you guess

Which sowing made there
the joy and the pain
And why loving it
makes you drunk and kills you

Guess
Guess
Guess
Guess
...

all poems written by Louis Aragon