Léo Ferré - I love you

Original Title : "Je t'aime"
Year: 1982

I love you
When there is the sea and then the horses
Making rounds like in the movie
But it's way more beautiful in your arms
When there is the sea and then the horses

When reason is wrong
And our eyes play at toppling themselves
And we don't know who is the boss
When reason is wrong

When we'd miss the end of the world
And we'd sell eternity
For that eternal second
When we'd miss the end of the world

When the devil sees us turn pale
When it's not possible to draw anymore
The love flower which is going to open up
When the devil sees us turn pale

When the machine has started
When we are not sure where we are anymore
And we wait to see what is going to happen

I love you

I love you for your voice, for your eyes on the night
Pour those shouts that you shout from the bottom of the pillows
And for that movement of the sea, for your life
That looks like the sea climing up to drown me

I love you for your belly where I'm going to get you
When your eyes look for the night that swings
To my hollow that digs you and from which my hurt life
Runs like a torrent in the bed of the silence

I love you for your open mug over the night
When your sap climbs like from the bottom of the eras
Boils in your belly and that I curse you
To be at the same time my sister, my angel, my light

I love you
When there is the sea and then the horses
Making rounds like in the movie
But it's way more beautiful in your arms
When there is the sea and then the horses

When reason is wrong
And our eyes play at toppling themselves
And we don't know who is the boss
When reason is wrong

When the devil sees us turn pale
When it's not possible to draw anymore
The love flower which is going to open up
When the devil sees us turn pale

When the machine has started
When we are not sure where we are anymore
And we wait to see what is going to happen

I love you

Barbara - Wait for my joy to come back

Original Title : "Attendez que ma joie revienne"
Year : 1963

Wait for my joy to come back
And for that memory to die
Of that love of so much sorrow
Which never stop dying
Before telling me 'I love you'
Before I'm able to tell it to you
Wait for my joy to come back
So that I can smile in the morning

Leave me. Sorrow takes me away
And I sail on my delirium
Leave me. Open that door.
Leave me. I'll come back
I'll wait for my joi to come back
And for that memory to be dead
Of that love of so much sorrow
For which I wanted to die
I'll wait for my joy to come back
So that I can smile in the morning
For the wind to have dried up my sorrow
And the night to have calmed my delirium

There is, I heard, a shore
Where one heals from the ill of loving
Dead loves are stranded there
Black shipwrecks from the past
If you want for my joy to come back
For me to be able to smile in the morning
Towards that country where sorrow dies
I beg you, let me go
Of my past loves,
The memory must perish.
So that, freed from my chain
Towards you, I could come back

Then, I make the promise to you
Together we'll go pick up
In the crazy garden of tenderness
The flower of love which will open up
But it's too early to tell you I love you
Too early to hear you say it
The voice I hear is his
They are alive, my memories
Forgive-me: It's him I love
The past can not die

Edith Piaf - You are everywhere

Original Title : "Tu es partout"
Year : 1943

We were loving each other quite tenderly
Like all lovers love one another
And then one day you left me
Since I am desperate
I see you everywhere in the sky
I see you everywhere on the earth
You are my joy and my sun
My night, my days, my clear dawns

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
All things that are around me
Even life only represents you
Sometimes I dream that I'm in your arms
And that you are speaking to my ear in a low tone
You are saying things that make the eyes close
And me, I find that wonderful

Maybe someday you'll come back
I know that my heart will wait for you
You will not be able to forget
The days we have spent
My eyes are constantly searching for you
Listen carefully, my heart is calling you
We will be able to love each other so well
You will see life will be beautiful ...

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
All things that are around me
Even life only represents you
Sometimes I dream that I'm in your arms
And that you are speaking to my ear in a low tone
You are saying things that make the eyes close
And me, I find that wonderful

Julos Beaucarne - Victor Hugo - I was not thinking about Rose

Original Title : "Je ne songeais pas à Rose"
Text: Victor Hugo (1856)
Year: 1969

I was not thinking about Rose
Rose came with me to the woods
We were talking about something
But I don't remember about what

I was cold like the marbles
I was walking mindlessly
I was talking of the flowers of the trees
Her eye seemed to imply : "After ?"

Dew was offering its pearls
The thicket its parasols
I was going forward, I was listening to the blackbirds
And Rose the nightingales

I, sixteen years old, and the morose look
Her twenty, her eyes were shining
The nightingales were singing Rose
And the blackbirds were whistling at me

Rose, straight on her hips
Raised her beautiful trembling arm
To grab a blackberry from the branches.
I did not see her white arm

Some water was running, fresh and hollow,
On the velvet mosses
And the loving nature
Was sleeping in the big deaf woods

Rose untied her shoe
And put, with an ingenuous look,
Her pretty little foot in the pure water
I did not see her naked foot

I did not know what to tell her
I was following her in the woods
Seeing her smile sometimes
And sigh a few times

I only saw she was beautiful
When coming out of the big deaf woods
- So be it, let's not think about it no more ! She said
- So be it, let's not think about it no more ! She said
I'm still thinking about it since

Jacques Bertin - The one who had the hair down the small of her back

Text: "Celle qui avait les cheveux dans les reins"
Year: 1975

The one who had the hair down the small of her back
Is she still kneeling over my head ?
At night, when I sleep, do I enter her garden ?
Without waking up I go down to her place again
I recognize the familiar objects one by one
The steps of stone, the pond, the shed
The silks I like and which she dresses herself in
The page where she is, streaked with black and lace
Teenage girl whose body I loved
I am thinking of you, I am preparing, I am dreaming
Night comes back, lost is your hand
Remain in my shoulder, Oh turtledove !

Charles Aznavour - Paris during the month of August

Original Title: "Paris au mois d'août"
Music: Georges Garvarentz
Year: 1966
Song written by Aznavour for the movie "Paris au mois d'août", inspired from the book written by René Fallet.
An english adaptation exists, written also by Aznavour in 1967.

Swept away by September
Our love of one summer
Sadly dismembers itself
And dies in the past
No matter how I expected it
My heart emptied of everything
Looks suspiciously like
Paris during the month of August

Of tears and laughter
Our love was made
Which dreading the worse
Lived day by day
Every street, every stone
Seemed to belong only to us
We were alone on earth
In Paris during the month of August

To tell you I love you
As far away as you are
A part of myself
Stays attached to you
And the other part, solitary
Looks from everywhere
For the blinding light
Of Paris during the month of August

God make that my dream
To find back some
Of the month of August on your lips
Of Paris in your eyes
Shapes up and revives
Our slightly crazy love
So that everything begins again
In Paris during the month of August

Charles Dumont - She

original title: "Elle"
Year: 1976

She
She is the hope behind the door
My heart beating in the stairway
She is my weakness and my strength
My lie and my thruth

She
When she is there time stops
She is of snow, she is of summer
She is my calm and my tempest
My wild flower, my orchid

She
Her red lips imprison me
In the kisses I give her
And her white arms are streams
When she falls asleep against my skin

She
She is my voluntray exile
Secret garden of my desires
She is everything I want to be
She is everything I want to sayv
She
She is the hope behind the door
My heart beating in the stairway
She is the dream taking me away
Where I can forget everything

She
Immortal like the stone
Warm like the grapes of August
She is my being and my light
The beginning and the end of everything

She
She is making me cross the sea
Figure head of my life
And it does not matter to me where she is taking me
Eyes wide open I follow her

She
She is well the first woman
Born from a rose a summer evening
Essential like the flame
Night sun of my thoughts

She
She is woman of all types
She is my life my destiny
She is my order and my disorder
I don't want anything else but to love her

Léo Ferré - Caussimon - Both of us

Original title: "Nous deux"
Text: Jean-Roger Caussimon
Year: 1961

They left without a warning
With their kids and their guitars
Our gipsy brothers of Saint-Ouen
They left in a flurry of wings
And without return, the swallows
Paris had no use for them anymore
Waves of concrete and idiocy
Drug stores and some strip tease are necessary
High rises and undergrounds
And of Boulogne and of Vincennes
And of the florished quays of the Seine
Soon nothing will be left no more
But that day my turtledove
My girl who's mine, my all beautiful
My love sister, my mom
In spite of the planks and the soil
We'll snuggle up like we can do
Both of us...
In spit of the soil and the planks
We'll cuddle like on Sunday's
When we go to the movies
Both of us...
And let us meet in dream afterwards
Fascinated like Adam and Eve
But all proud of having found that
Both of us...

You see it's written on the frontpage
We are already fighting over the moon
Inocent children of tomorrow!
One general on the planets
Will follow you with its spyglass
And will say "It's red with blood ! "

By juggling so much with the bomb
One day it'll have to fall
It's its purpose and it's our lot
That day has to come eventually
Farewell, Paris and farewell, Vienna
Farewell Rome and Monte Carlo
But on that day my turtledove
My girl who's mine, my all beautiful
My love sister, my mom
Be it that everything turns to ice or burns
It does not matter if we are together
Us both...
That everything burns or that every turns to ice
We'll already have our place
In the legend of the lovers
Us both...
So when the planet will explode
If the trumpets ever sound
We'll divinely not care
Both of us...

People will treat me of artist
Of being heartless and if it saddens me
I'd not be surprised of it...
Because that pitiful and tender heart
To you only who could take it
It's been a long time I have given it...
Just like I give you today
This song of end of fall
That thought itself love song
I'm not a saint nor an apostle
And to still think of other people
The time left to me is too short
In the meanwhile my turtledove
My girl who's mine, my all beautiful
My love sister, my mom
As our souls wander
Let's kiss very close to the waves
Of the Ocean of the bad days
Us both...
And then to our faithful loves
In the heart of eternal snows
Let's get lost forever
Both of us!
Both of us!

Jean-Roger Caussimon's version (1970) :

Léo Ferré - Song for her

Original Title: "Chanson pour elle"
Year: 1961

If your body was made of thin lace
I'd embroide it by the four ends
And then I'd made so beautiful tablecloths out of it
That we'd eat love on our knees

If your eyes were ancient stars
Of those we see but are no more
I'd look behind the canvas
Of that big painting of suspended blue

If your crazy hair were the foremast
And that I made a boat out of your heart
While going back up the flow of the Seine
You'd be Paris and I sailor

If your black star where I brighten up
Was the chalice and if I were God
I'd drink Death there down to the roots
And then I'd go away to make the heavens again

If the dead suns of the celestial plains
Were coming down one day in your faded body
There would still shine to your modest breasts
A bit of their flame, a bit of my hunger

A bit of their flame, a bit of my hunger

Charles Dumont - The prodigal son

Original title: "Le fils prodigue"
Year: 1970

You can sleep without anguish
He is going away and it's for tomorrow
An angel died, an angel passes
He is fed up with your mornings
The youngest of the family
The most tender, the most distant
The one who pleased to your daughter
The one who risks it all
The good for nothing

It does not matter how we travel
Boat, plane, pavot flower
To leave is always an illusion
Maybe but it is so beautiful

You didn't like this young man
With hair too short or too long
Thief of hearts, thief of apples
He is going away. What a blessing
But he is going to pick up stars
Which will florish your skies of beds
To you who stay in the hold
And do not dare to pay the price

It does not matter how we travel
Boat, plane, pavot flower
To leave is always an illusion
Maybe but it is so beautiful

Undoubtly, luck and glory
Will sow flowers under his steps
Unless that, from dreams to unfortunate events
He gets lost, he drowns himself
Whether he is in the bed of a queen
Whether he makes a last circle in the water
Whether he wins or loses his sorrow
His destiny is one of the most beautiful

The end of the journey does not matter
The name of the hero does not matter
The one who carries mirages
Is a flower to your hats
Is a flower to your hats

Léo Ferré - The madness

Original title: "La folie"
Year: 1970

Van Gogh's chair where you do not sit
Vincent's shoes which you do not put on
The ear of that guy who does not listen to you anymore
Those crows in the wheat of a lost canvas

I do not stop anymore when I see madness
I run her errands and sleep in her bed

The tears of that tree worried in the forest
What kind of wood was Vincent's chair?
The sheeps of the street hide in scarves
Workers change tune without stopping work

I do not stop anymore when I see madness
I run her errands and sleep in her bed

The steps of that child in the hell of the Faculty
Her sex and her virtue, her pill and her stage fright
When vertigo penetrates and overtakes her
Under the double and iced eye of an old prostitute's mirror

It's at that moment that I lose madness
And that I stay alone with my madman's eyes

Léo Ferré - It's great

Original title: "C'est extra"
Year: 1969

A leather dress like a spindle
That would be hot unintentionally
And inside, like a sailor
A girl who sways an english tune
It's great
The Moody Blues singing the night
Like some satin of a married's white
And in the harbor of this night
A girl who sways and comes to berth*

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

Some hair falling like the evening
And some music at the bottom of the loins
That jazz jazzing in the dark
And that ache that feels good
It's great
Those hands playing some rainbow
On the guitar of life
And then those shouts raising to the sky
Like a shining cigarette

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

Some stockings holding high up
Like the strings of a violin
And that flesh troubled by
The bow that runs my song
It's great
And under the barely closed veil
That tuft of black jésus
Streaming down in its craddle
Like a swimmer noone expects anymore

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

A leather dress like an oversight
That would be hot unintentionally
And inside, like a grey morning,
A girl swaying and keeping quiet
It's great
The Moody Blues who do not care
That amp not meaning anything no more
And in the music of the silence
A girl who sways and comes dying

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

*: To berth in French uses the same verb as to wet, originates from wetting the anchor used in a different context here.

Jacques Bertin - The child was coughing on the other side of the wall

Original Title: "L'enfant toussait de l'autre côté du mur"
Year: 1975

The child was coughing on the other side of the wall, they were fine
They had done everything that had to be done
They even had some times left
Him, had picked up a book, he didn't feel like going out
He found himself growing old and feeling good
He desired her but how to know?
Maybe she was distracted, he didn't dare
She was pacing in the house. She didn't dare

Serge Reggiani - Moustaki - My loneliness

Original Title: "Ma solitude"
Text: Georges Moustaki
Year: 1967

For having slept so often
With my loneliness
I almost made a friend out of her,
A sweet habit

She never leaves me for a second
Faithful like a shadow
She followed me here and there
To the four corners of the earth

Oh no, no, no, I'm never alone
With my loneliness

When she is at the hollow of my bed
She takes all the space
And we spend long nights
Both facing each other

I do not know up to where
this accomplice will go
Will I have to grow a taste for it
Or will I have to react

Oh no, no, no, I'm never alone
With my loneliness

Through her I have learned as much
Than I have shed tears
If sometimes I repudiate her
Never does she disarm

And if I prefer the love
Of another cortesan
She'd be at my last day
My last companion

Oh no, no, no, I'm never alone
With my loneliness.

No, no, no, no I'll never be alone
With my loneliness.

Moustaki's version:

Bourvil - The tenderness

Original Title: "La tendresse"
Text: Noël Roux
Music: Hubert Giraud
Year: 1963

One can live without wealth
Almost without a penny
Lords and princesses
There are not many left
But to live without tenderness
One could not
No, no, no, no
One could not

One can live without glory
Which does not prove anything
Be unknown in history
And find himself fine with it
But to live without tenderness
It's out of the question
No, no, no, no
It's out of the question

What a sweet weakness
What a pretty feeling
That need for tenderness
Which comes when we are born
Really, really, really

Work is necessary
But if one must stay
Weeks without doing anything
Well, one gets used to it
But to live without tenderness
Time feels slow
Slow, slow, slow, slow
Time feels slow

In the fire of youth
Pleasures are born
And love makes prowesses
To dazzle us
Yes but without tenderness
Love would be nothing
No, no, no, no
Love would be nothing

When merciless life
Falls down on you
We are nothing more than a pour devil
Crushed and disappointed
Then without tenderness
Of an heart supporting us
No, no, no, no
We would not go any further

A child kissing us
Because we make him happy
All our sorrows fade away
We become teary eyed
My God, my God, my God

In your immense wisdom
Immense fervour
Make it rain endlessly
At the bottom of our hearts
Torrents of tenderness
So that love rules
Love rules
Up to the end of days