Original Title: "On est pas sérieux quand on a 17 ans"
Text: Arthud Rimbaud
Year: 1986
We are not serious when we are seventeen years old
- A fine evening, to hell with the ales and the limonades
Of the rowdy cafés with bright chandeliers
- We go under the green lime trees of the promenade
The lime trees smell good in the fine evenings of June!
The air is sometimes so sweet that we close our eyelids;
The wind loaded with noises - the city is not far -
Has some scent of vines and smells of beer
Here we catch a very small piece of rag
of dark sky, framed by a very small branch
Stung of a bad star, which merges
with sweet shivers, small and all white...
Night of June! Seventeen years old! We let ourselves get intoxicated
The sap is like champaign and goes to the head
We ramble, we feel a kiss to the lips
Beating there, like a small beast
The crazy heart robinsons through the novels
When in the pale light of a streetlamp
A damzel passes with charming airs
Under the shadow of the detachable collar of her father
And as she thinks you are immensely naive
While she trots about in her small ankle boots
She turns around, agile and with a lively gesture
On your lips then dies the cavatina
You are in love. Praised until the month of August.
You are in love. Your sonnets makes her laugh
All your friends go away, you are of unpleasant taste
Then the adored one, one evening, deigned writing you!
That evening - You enter inside the loud cafés
You ask for ale or limonade
We are not serious when we are seventeen years old
And we have green lime trees on the promenade
