Léo Ferré - The chimerical pond

Original Title: "L'étang chimérique"
Text: Léo Ferré
Year: 1958

Our most beautiful memories blossom on the pond
In the faraway castle of a faraway Spain
They tell us of the time lost oh my companion
And that white water lily it's your twenty year old heart

One day we'll embark
On the pond of our memories
And will do again just for the sake of it
The sweet journey of life
One day we'll embark
My sweet Pierrot my great friend
To never ever come back

Our bad memories will drown in the pond
Of that faraway castle of a faraway Spain

And we'll only keep for ourselves oh my companion
That white lily and your twenty year old heart

One day we'll embark
On the pond of our memories
And will do again just for the sake of it
The sweet journey of life
One day we'll embark
My sweet Pierrot my great friend
To never ever come back

Then everything will be illuminated my friend

Jacques Bertin's version:

Dominique A - Music Hall

Year : 2006

Big anxious grey skies
Nail the bathing day to the ground.
The man advances in the middle of the dunes
He walks swaying
He remembers the Music Hall
The long funnel corridor
Where the crowd was unwinding
Dresses hanging only by a thread
And the wet, wet sidewalk.

He advances in the middle of the dunes
Gomina beaten by the wind
He thinks it's eight o'clock in the evening
And he walks down the hall
Where the shoulders rustle as they slip
The crowd takes place in the heart of the dunes
The sea clapped loudly.

"You don't know how to say farewell to it"
Did she tell him last night
"You won't see if I leave
My road does not pass through your eyes
In your head, it's eight o'clock in the evening
Forever, here or elsewhere
It's the velvet of the long corridor
That we would find, if we opened your heart”.

At the Casino which watches over the dunes
The machines wake up, gasping,
A few orphans of the moon
Are already conscientiously working
At accumulating misfortune
A large strong coffee awaits
Near the rattling machines
As he enters, he sees the carpet
And he sees lights from the past.

" You don't know how to say farewell to them
Nor to those big red letters
Nor to the disorder of intermissions
Nor to the curtains which go floating
You remind yourself of the Music Hall
Of some laughter and tightened throats
And the rustling of the shoulders
And outside, the wet sidewalk”

Seaside boulevard, the house
In the heart of other silent houses
Mouths closed once the summer is passed
The table laid, the slender woman
The plate that just needs to be warmed up
And the evening before still vibrating
Of the few brewed truths
He forgives her without an effort
It was too real to touch it.

They kiss, she goes to work
She has the forgiveness of the ghost
And the unshaken hope;
Love rears up in the hall
Where memory has condemned him
With the great swaggering sadness
Of the decayed end of parties
Where the clothes take a break
And the heart is undressed.

And under the gray skies which worries
In the dunes or at the Casino
Among the hiccupping machines
He looks, he sees hoops
Of fires browning the carpet
And he sees some curtains falling
Hands clapping in the storm
Outside.

And he sees the letters
Red, and the crimson corridor
And all the possible of the nights
Which is displayed, red, spelled out
And none of this is over
Love nestles there, unbroken
And all the goodbyes are entangled in it
How to say goodbye to life?

He remembers the music hall
From the long funnel corridor
Where the crowd was unwinding
Dresses hanging by a thread
And wet, wet sand.