Serge Reggiani - How long it is to die, my youth

Original Title: "Comme elle est longue à mourir ma jeunesse"
Text: Jean Dréjac
Music: Michel Legrand
Year: 1971

How long it is to die, my youth
My youth in my heart
Have I never betrayed it, my youth
Who leaves me to my agitation
And who goes away from me
How long it is to die, this rose
This rose of life
The most beautiful of the garden of extravagances
One rose,
The last one of the garden we forget.

How heavy they are to carry in the fall
In the fall of life
Those dreams who will sink without anyone
Without anyone to care for them
We have to resign ourselves
But I am looking at one rose blossoming
One rose of the Spring
And I suddenly find something back
Under my hand
Yes, I am hearing the wandering heart
Of a young man
A young man
Who does not want to die

Jean Ferrat - Tell me about the sea

Original Title: "Raconte-moi la mer"
Text: Claude Delecluse
Music: Jean Ferrat
Year: 1965

Tell me about the sea
Tell me the taste of the seaweeds
And the blue and the green
Dancing on the waves.
The sea is the impossible
It's the happy shore
It's the peaceful morning
When we open our eyes
It's the gate of the open sea
Opened with its two door wings.
It's the head on a journey
Towards other continents.
It's flying like Icarus
Going out to meet the sun
By closing one's memory
To this cruel world.
The sea is the desire
Of this country of love
That will have to be discovered
Before the end of the day.

Tell me about the sea
Tell me its pale dawns
And the blue and the green
Where some stars fall
The sea is the innocence
Of the lost paradise
The garden of childhood
Where nothing sings anymore
It's the foam and the sand
Always repeated
And life is alike to
The rythm of the tides
It's the endless distress
Of the things that are going away.
It's everything that is leaving us
during the dead season.
The sea is the regret
For that country of love
Which we are always looking for
and that we never reach.

Tell me about the sea
Tell me the taste of the seaweeds
And the blue and the green
Dancing on the waves

Claude Vinci - Eluard - The lover

Original title: "L'amoureuse"
Text: Paul Eluard
Music: Jean-Pierre Martin
Year: 1971

She is standing over my eyelids
And her hair are in mine
She has the shape of my hands
She has the color of my eyes
She engulfs herself in my shadow
Like a stone over the sky
Like a stone over the sky

She engulfs herself in my shadow
Like a stone over the sky
Her eyes are always opened
And she will not let me sleep
Her dreams in broad light
Are making the suns evaporate
Are making the suns evaporate

Her dreams in broad light
Are making the suns evaporate
Are making me laugh, cry and laugh
Talk without having anything to say.
Are making me laugh, cry and laugh
Talk without having anything to say.

Jean-Max Brua - The Man from Brive

Original Title: "L'homme de Brive"
Year: 1972

It was warm that day
The dog was sleeping in the dust of the yard
She was busy doing the laundry in the kitchen
When the light changed
Standing in the doorway
A man she could not see very well
Thinking like an idiot:
I did not hear the dog
Then wiped her hands
They were fresh with soap
He says: "After the bridge
I almost lost my way

He came in for good.
Told her: I've been sent by the tall one
But I apologize, I've been walking all the way from Brive
And without knowing, here I am, catching you
In laundry
She says: With those heats
We dirty so much more that we perspire
If we were counting our hours
We would believe there was no end to it
And then, I forget everything
I haven't even proffered you anything
But one does not refuse a drink
When one has walked all that fragment

Sat down on the bench
Told her she was lucky
For the tall one
She poured him some wine
Felt embarrassed of the sudden silence
He was giving himself some time
Emptied his drink with small sips
Smiled from time to time
To her who was staying up
Then says: How warm it is
We are both alone, or just as much.
She says: I have lost my man
It's been fourteenth months soon

She made him her womanly face
Who knew how to wait for someone to pass
He had his hands of wool
His smile, his eyes of ashes
His breath
Then he came back to the bench
While she was putting back her dress
How so, for the tall one, you know
I have to tell you about it in sequence
She says: "There is indeed a tall guy
It's the elder son of the neighbors
You'll take the path
Just after the white wall..."

Leny Escudero - We won't have time

Original Title: "Nous n'aurons pas le temps"
Year: 1963

We won't have time
To grow weary
We won't have time
To love each other
I know that well before
The last day
We won't have given
All our love

I can't love you
For the future
For the days without love
Which are going to come
I'll love you a long time
And when death
Will tell me "It's time!"
I will still love you

We won't have time
To wear out a thousand caresses
To wear out our youth
Our love is too big
Even if I live a thousand years
Before the hour strikes
For our love to die
I'll lose you before

The time of our love
For ever
My love, my love
Will have passed
Without having had time
To grow weary
Without having had time
To love one another

The time of our love
For ever
My love, my love
Will have passed

Monique Morelli - Seghers - Forbidden shores

Original Title: "Rives défendues"
Text: Pierre Seghers
Year: 1970

Along the forbidden shores
Along the astounded loves
Along the time I've lost
You, You my elusive love
Nothing more than a trace in the sand
Never seen, never heard

I took solitary paths
Which turned around the earth
There, I've learned to keep quiet for a long time
You, you were shouting in my chest
A lost shout of wildfowl
Where my mysteries were tearing one another apart

I've held secret like a fire
Love which is written with chalk
On the walls and in the forests
You, You were pursuing me endlessly
Like my shadow, like my distress
Like a reflection on the marsh

Over me, sometimes, you leaned
In your gaze a swath
Of tears, of exchanged tears
You, you were seeing me like a cloud
Vanishing in the bottom of the beaches
Annihilating myself in my dive

So leaving one another
We were going beyond time
To die where the wind is waiting for us
You, you were soon nothing more than a gesture
Than a mirage or what's left of it
And yet, I'll be waiting for you for a long time.

Yves Montand - Jacques Prévert - Children who love one another

Text: Jacques Prévert
Music: Joseph Kosma
Year: 1946
It was original written for the movie 'Les Portes de la Nuit'/"Gates of the night" with Yves Montand as main actor.

The children who love one another
Kiss, standing up, against the doors of the night
And the passers-by are pointing their fingers at them
But the children who love one another
Are not present for anyone

And it's only their shadow
Which trembles in the night
Exciting the rage of the passers-by
Their rage, their contempt, their laugh and their envy
The children who love one another
Are not there for anyone

They are elsewhere way further than the night
Way higher than the day
In the blinding light of their first love

Mouloudji's version:

Extract from the movie "Gates of the Night"
:

Monique Morelli - Aragon - Santa Espina

Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1970
This poem is about a catalan Sardane, Santa Espina (Holy Thorn), which had been outlawed by the dictatures of Rivera and Franco.

I remember a tune that could not be heard without the heart beating
And the blood being on fire
Without the fire starting again like an heart under the ash
And we finally knew why the sky is blue

I remember a tune alike to the air from the open sea
A tune alike to the shout of the migrating birds
A tune of which the sob seems to carry in the margin
The revenge of the seas on their tamers

I remember a tune which we whistled in the shadow
During the times without sun, nor errant knights
When childhood was crying and in the catacombs
A pure people was dreaming of the death of tyrants

He was carrying in its name the holy thorns
Which gives, at the forehead of a god, his colored tears
And the song in the flesh, like an anchored smallboat
Revived his wound and reopened his pain

Noone would have dared to put words
On this tune humming all the forbidden words
The universe ravaged with ancient poxes
It was your hope and your four thursdays

I search in vain its heartbreaking sentences
But the earth only has tears of Opera left
At the memory of those murmuring waters is missing
The call from spring to spring of the tenoras

Oh Holy Thron Oh Holy Thorn resume
We were listening to you standing up in time past, remember
Who could restore your romance nowadays
Give back the voice to the singing woods which went quiet

I want to believe that there are musics still
In the mysterious heart of the country there
The mute will talk again and the paralytics
Will walk a fine day at the sound of the cobla

And we'll see fall from the forehead of the Son of Man
The crown of blood symbol of misfortune
And Man will sing loudly this time as
If life was beautiful and hawthorn in blossom

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Cora Vaucaire - We think of you Paris

Original Title: "On pense à toi Paris"
Year: 1959

Dream seller and love girl
Every Manon's from the America's
Every Carmen's from Singapore
Have moments of melancholy

Adventurers from South to North
Sailors, settlers or gold diggers
Also have moments of blues
And in the whole world
Some evening

We think of you,
of you Paris
When we are far away
When we are bored
When think of you
Like a friend
To whom we can tell our whole life
When we are alone
When all is grey
When things are going badly
From bad to worse
We think of you,
of you Paris
And something immediately
Smiles at you

I recollect the corner of a street
A small bistrot
In the 18th district
And a coalmanv very moustached
Who served us cream with coffee
We met there twice a day
And were telling love words to one another
Since that time in my heart
Paris, for me, is happiness

I think of you,
of you Paris
When I'm far away
When I get bored
I think of you
Like of a friend
To whom I can tell my whole life
When we are alone
When all is grey
When things are going badly
From bad to worse
We think of you,
of you Paris
Like to the love
Which we never forget

Mouloudji - One day you will see

Original Title: "Un jour, tu verras"
Music: George Van Parys
Year: 1954

One day, you'll see, we'll meet
Somewhere, anywhere, guided by chance
We'll look at each other and smile at one another
And, hand in hand, will walk the streets
Time passes so fast, the evening will hide our hearts well
Those two thieves who keep their happiness
Then we'll reach a great square
Where the cobbles would be sweet to our grey souls
There would be a ball there, very poor, very common
Under a sky full of fog and melancholy
A blind man would play some barrel organ
That tune would be the most beautiful, the nicest to us

Then I would invite you, I'd take you by the waist
We'd dance quietly far from the town people
We'd dance love, eyes at the bottom of the eyes
Toward an end of the world, toward a deep night

One day, you'll see, we'll meet
Somewhere, anywhere, guided by chance
We'll look at each other and smile at one another
And, hand in hand, will walk the streets

Live version:

Léo Ferré - The sad song

Original Title: "La chanson triste"
Year: 1955

When sorrow knocks on your closed door
Give it fire for the sake of God
If your flame is dead and everything is resting
It'll go away I have not done better
If your flame is dead and everything is resting
It'll go away I have not done better

Flowers of my life were white roses
I've given them to all my friends
to pluck their petals under 4 planks
I'd have done better to decorate my life with them
to pluck their petals under 4 planks
I'd have done better to decorate my life with them

I had clothes made from clouds
I had hair like flags
And my well-behaved mane was floating to the wind
Then I have lost it all, there was nothing left but the skin
And my well-behaved mane was floating to the wind
Then I have lost it all, there was nothing left but the skin

I went away under ten feet of clay
Stuck face to face by a sky of wood
And telling my verses to my docile verses
Who would have rhymed me differently than I did
And telling my verses to my docile verses
Who would have rhymed me differently than I did

When sorrow knocks on your closed door
Give it fire for the sake of God
And the last rose would flare up
Which I'd go and pick up between two farewells
And the last rose would flare up
Which I'd go and pick up between two farewells

Alain Barrière - She was so pretty

Original Title: "Elle était si jolie"
Year: 1963 (France's Eurovision song)

She was so pretty that I did not dare loving her
She was so pretty I can't forget her
She was too pretty when the wind was taking her away
She was feeling, delighted, and the wind was telling me

She is way too pretty and you I know you
Love her a whole lifetime you will never be able to
Yes but she is gone, it's stupid but it's true
She was pretty, I will never forget

Today, autumn is here and I often cry
Today, autumn is here, how far the spring is
In the park where shiver the leaves under the ill wind
Her dress twirls then she disappears

She was so pretty that I did not dare loving her
She was so pretty I can't forget her
She was too pretty when the wind was taking her away
She was so pretty I will never forget

Les Compagnons de la Chanson - Bécaud - I belong to you

Original Title: "Je t'appartiens"
Text: Pierre Delanoë
Music: Gilbert Bécaud
Year: 1955, 1956 (Les compagnons de la Chanson's version)
The song was a hit and adapted to english to become the famous song "Let it be me"

Like clay
the fragile insect
the docile slave
I belong to you

Of my whole being
You are the only master
I have to submit
I belong to you

If you condemn
Throwing my soul
At the heart of the flames
I can't do anything about it

If you condemn
If you curse me
Here is my soul
Here are my hands

With the sorrows
Love and hate
Flowing in my veins
I belong to you

What can I do
To satisfy you
Lord of the earth
On my path

Like the angels
To sing the praises
But I am not angel
You know it well

I am nothing but a man
Nothing but a poor man
Who likes you
Like a buddy

Often I think
That in your immense
Palace of silence
You must be well

Sometimes I think
That in your immense
Palace of silence
We must be well

Gilbert Bécaud's version:

Claude Vinci - Paul Eluard - In Name of

Original Title: "Au nom"
Text: Paul Eluard (1943)
Year: 1963

In name of the perfect and deep forehead
In name of the eyes I am looking at
And the mouth I am kissing
For today and for ever
In name of the burried hope
In name of the tears in the dark
In name of the laughable complaints
In name of the laughs that scare
In name of the laughs in the street
Of the sweetness which binds our hands
In name of the fruits covering the flowers
On a good and beautiful earth
In name of the men in prison
In name of the deported women
In name of all our comrades
Martyred and massacred
For not having accepted the shadow
We have to drain wrath
And make the iron rise up
To preserve the high image
Of the innocent people hunted everywhere
And who will triumph everywhere

Léo Ferré - The memory and the sea

Original Title: "La mémoire et la mer"
Year: 1970, 1994 (Léotard's version)

The tide, I have it in the heart
Which comes in me again like a sign
I die of my little sister
Of my child and of my swan
A boat it depends on how
It is secured to the harbor, barely.
Some lightyears are crying down
from my firmament and I leave some behind
I'm the ghost of Jersey
the one that comes the evenings of show
Throwing at you the mist as kisses
And picking you up in his rhymes
Like the trammel of July
Where the lone wolf was glinting
The one I was seeing shine
At the fingers of sand of the earth

Remember that sea dog
That we were setting free on parole
And who barks like mad in the desert
Of wracks from some necropolis.
I'm sure that life is there
With its flannel lungs
When it cries of those weathers
The cold, all grey, which is calling us
I remember evenings over there
And sprints won over the foam
That slobber of the short-haired horses
At the level of the rocks which are wasting away
Oh the angel of lost pleasures
Oh rumor of an other habit
My desires from then on are nothing more
but a sorrow of my loneliness

And the devil of the conquered evenings
With his palenesses of rescue
And the shark of the paradises
In the environment wet with mosses
Come back green girl of the Fjords
Come back fiddle of the violin bands
In the harbor, the horns are clamoring
For the return of the comrades
Oh rare perfume of the salants
In the pepper fire of the chappings
When I was going while geometric-ing
My soul at the hollow of your wound
In the disorder of your ass
Nabbed in the sheets made of thin dawn
I was seeing one more stained glass window.

And you green girl, my spleen.

The sea shells acting a minor part
Under the broken liquid sunlights
Playing so much castanets
That it looked like Spain, livid
God of the granites have mercy
Of their vocation of finery
When the knife comes to interfere in
Their castanet figure
And I was seeing what one has a foreboding of
When we have a premonition of the glimpse
Between the shutters of the blood
And that the corpuscules represent
A blue mathematic
In that sea which is never slack
From which comes in again little by little towards me
That memory of the stars

That rumor coming from there
Under the friendly arc where I blind myself
Those hands which show off to me
Those ruminatning hands that moo
That rumor follows me for a long time
Like a beggar under the anathema
Like the shadow which loses its time
Drawing my theorem
And on my red make-up
Comes beating like a door
That rumor which goes standing
In the street filled with dead musics
It's over the sea, it's over
On the beach, the sand bleats
Like sheeps of infinite
When the shepherdess sea is calling me

Philippe Léotard's version:

Jacques Bertin - What Benoist says

Original Title: "Ce que dit Benoist"
Year: 1975

He also says that there was a crazy woman in the camp
A tall thin woman who was sleeping with the soldiers
The army had cut her husband's throat and burned her house
One day she gave birth to a still born child
She held him in her arms in silence while crying for a week
He says "As she is crazy, she has no God, no hatred"

How it feels good at your place
It's raining, I'm waiting for I do not know what

He says "I came out well, I believe I didn't kill anyone
The only thing I've lost in Algeria is my ability to revolt
It's not much for such a long journey"
He says that he is building alone a house for himself somewhere
He says "I remember a kid belly chopped by the bullets, who was looking at me
And then I also lost a small penknife I cared about"

How it feels good at your place
It's raining, I'm waiting for I do not know what

Léo Ferré - Your style

Original Title: "Ton style"
Year: 1971

All those shouts from the street, those men, those shops
Where I see you in the alleys like an offense
To the three pences jewelry, to the lingeries of nothing
Those shadows in the eyes of the women when you pass
All those noises all those chants and those passing perfumes
When you place yourself in it or when I exile you there
To love you from further away like that in passing
All those slightly crazy stuffs, all that is your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is my law when you bend to it, slut!
It's my blood to your wound, it's your fire to my cigarettes
It's love on the knees that never ends
Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass

All those harbors of the night, that kid that we'd like to have
And then we don't want him anymore as soon as you beckon me
At the corner of a saying sticked in your wellness
By the blood of my set² and the wine of your vine
All this blending in memories of us
In those lost worlds of the year eighty thousand
When we'll not be there anymore and when we'll be reborn
All those slightly crazy stuffs, all that is your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is your right when I'm allowed to your style
It's that hellish game of head and then of tails
It's love that keeps quiet when you do not sing anymore
Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass

Wanting so much to know, one does not know anything no more
What I like about you it's what I imagine
At the tip of a gesture, at the rescue of my hand
At your mouth invented beyond indignity
In those streets of the night with my masked eyes
When you only recognizes a specific style of me
When I make of myself another one, imagined
All those careless things all that it's your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is your law when I bend to it, slut!
It's your wound, it's my blood, it's my ash at your cigarettes
When the night has thrown its fires and is dieing
Your style is your heart, it's your heart, it's your heart

²slang designating men's three pieces, usually used to ask to be left alone

Monique Morelli - Gaston Couté - Washday

Original Title: "Jour de lessive"
Text: Gaston Couté
His poems were first published in 1928 after his death.
Year: 1963

I left this very morning
Still drunk from the night but taken
of what's like an extreme digust
Spitting my farewell to Paris
And here I am, my good woman,
Yes, bust like four coins
My laundry is dirty so is my soul...
Here I am home!

My poor mother is on washday
Mother, Mother
Mother, your bad guy is coming
At the right time!...

Here is that linen on which dripped many
And many times a bitter wine,
Where bitches with painted lips
have wiped their mouth of hell
And here my soul, darker
Of the same blemishes - Alas!
Than the front of my shirt
Grey, pink and lilac...

My poor mother is on washday
Mother, Mother
Mother, your bad guy is coming
At the right time!...

At the bottom of the cuvier where we sow,
among the water, the ash from the oven,
Let all my bohemian linen
rest for a whole day...
And at last let my soul, alike
to that saddening display,
Among your soul - Oh good old woman!
Rest a moment...

My poor mother is on washday
Mother, Mother
Mother, your bad guy is coming
At the right time!...

Just like the linen confides
Its shame to the sweetnes of water
When I'll have recounted my life
Miserable of awful bastard,
Like one rinces in the fountain
The linen coming out of the cuvier
Mother, water my soul in sorrow
With a little mercy!

My poor mother is on washday
Mother, Mother
Mother, your bad guy is coming
At the right time!...

And when you will come to spread out
The linen parfumed of yellow flag
All white among the tender whiteness
Of the hedge where the month of May is blooming
I want to see my soul, still pure
In spite of its long sleep
In pain and filth,
Come back to life under the Sun!...

Gabriel Yacoub's version: