Léo Ferré - This wound

Original Title : "Cette blessure"
Year: 1970

This wound
Where dies the sea like a flesh sorrow
Where goes life to germinate in the desert
Which makes of blood the whiteness of the cribs
Which closes up at the marble of the tomb
This wound from which I come
This wound
Where my lip at dawn of love
Where beats your fever a bit like a drum
Where leaves your vine when pressing fingers on it
Where the shout comes, the same every time
This wound from which you come
This wound
Which closes up at the edge of boredom
Like a scar of the night
And which never stops reopening
Under some tears sharpened by desire
This wound
Like a sun under melancholy
Like a garden which we only open at night
Like a perfume which lags during the tide
Like a smile on destiny
This wound from which I come
This wound
Draped of silk under its black triangle
Where go the surveyors of fate
To build from nothing some assisted sorrows
While digging there for the sin
This wound from which you come
This wound
Which we would like sewn in the middle of desire
Like a sewing over pleasure
Which we would like to see close forever
Like a door opened on death
This wound of which I die

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.

Edith Piaf - Prévert - When you sleep

Original Title: "Quand tu dors"
Text: Jacques Prévert
Music: Christiane Verger
Year: 1961

You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you sleep, it makes me suffer

Your eyes closed
Your tall body lying down
It's funny but it makes me cry
And suddenly, here you are laughing
Laughing out loud while sleeping
Where are you right now?
Where are you gone really?
Maybe with another woman
Far away in another country
And with her you are laughing of me
You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you sleep, it makes me suffer

When you are sleeping, I don't know if you love me
You're so close but still so far
I'm completely naked, huddled against you
But it's as if I wasn't there
Yet I hear a beating heart
I don't know if it's beating for me
I know nothing, I don't know anymore
I'd like for it to stop beating, your heart
If one day you stop loving me

You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you dream
It makes me cry

Here comes the day
And suddenly you awaken
And you smile at me
You smile with the sun
And I don't think to the night anymore
You say the words always the same
Did you have a good night
And I answer like the day before
Yes honey, I slept well
And I dreamt of you like every night.

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Barbara's version:

Léo Ferré - The artist's life

Original Title: "La vie d'artiste"
Year: 1950

I met you by chance,
here, elsewhere or somewhere else
Maybe you remember it
Without knowing each other we fell in love
And even if it's not true
One has to believe in the ancient stories.
I gave you what I had:
What to sing, what to dream
And you believed in my Bohemia
But if you thought at twenty years old
That one can live of the spirit of time
Your point of view is not the same

This infamous end of the month
Which since we are you and me
Is coming back seven times a week
And our evenings without cinema
And my success which is not coming
And our uncertain means of sustenance

You see I haven't forgotten anything
In this statement of affair sad to make one cry
Which records our failure
You still have nice days ahead of you
Enjoy them my poor love
Beautiful years are passing by fast.

And now you are going away
Both we are going to grow old
Each for himself how sad that is
You can take the record player away
Me, I'll keep the piano
I continue my life of an artist

Later, without knowing why
A foreigner, a clumsy man
Reading my name on a poster
Will talk to you of my successes
But a little sad, you, who knows
You'll tell him that I flaunt myself.

Cora Vaucaire - Three little notes of music

Original Title: "Trois petites notes de musique"
Text:Henri Colpi
Music: Georges Delerue
Year: 1961

Three little music notes closed down in the heart of memory
Done with their racket, they are turning the page and are going to sleep
But one day without warning, they come back in memory

You, you wanted to forget a little overused tune in the streets of Summer
You, you'll never forget one street, one Summer, one girl who was humming.

La, la, la, la, I love you, was singing the old melody
La, la, my love, some words without anything sublime
As long as the rhyme always brings
An haunting holiday romance which harasses you

True, she was so pretty, so fresh radiant and you didn't catch her
True, for her first thrill
She was offering you a song to take as one

La, la, la, la, every dreaming, rhymes with ending
Yours doesn't make sense, ending before it starts
The time of a dance, the space of a refrain

Three little music notes
Which are screwing you over from the bottom of the memories
Raising a cruel stage curtain
On a thousand and one sorrows which refuse to die

Georges Moustaki - Loves end one day

Text: Georges Moustaki
Original Title: "Les amours finissent un jour"
Year: 1962

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of regretting you
My beautiful love of one summer
Here already comes Winter
Soon the sky will be covered
With big clouds heavier
Than our love sorrow

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of thinking to me
There are other men than me
To say the words you expect
To offer you new springs
To forget the past
To make it start over

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of tearing each others off
Why suffer or cry
Nothing new under the sun
Everything is so much
So much the same
It'd be better from now on
To forget how we loved one another

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
But us both it was different
We could have loved one another
For a long time, for a long time, for a long time

We could have loved one another
For a long time, for a long time, for a long time
Forever...

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Dominique A - Poetry

Original Title: "La poésie"
Year: 2018

Poetry went away
I suspect her of having passed by your place
Of having lied down in your bed
And of having listened to the rain over the roof
She has so little to confide
Not the kind to pour out her feelings too much. A few words
She left over your desk
A few deletions with a fountain pen
Then she went away
Then she went away

It took us a few days
To be a bit less blind and deaf, and find
That the air was a bit less heavy
Our shoulders hunched up a bit more, and think
That after having announced
A thousand times reported departure, she had
Removed the coat from the hook
Where it was hanging for centuries
Then went away
Then went away

Are we lost children?
Forest stretched as far as the eyes could see for the evening
Refuses to abandon us
To let all power to the darkness
On our story gotten off to a bad start
Full moon has been summoned to thwart
The traps of a too dark night
In the area around a slaughterhouse
Without a poem to save us
Without a poem to save us

I don't know why I was thinking
That she couldn't have gone away, without passing
By your place and on your desk
I saw the deletions made with a fountain pen, a few words
Which slipped over my skin
On your face, and on your hands they took
The rythm of a heart on borrowed time
And their skin was weak as well
But one would have to hold onto it
But one would have to hold onto it

Julos Beaucarne - In the memory of roses

Original Title: "De mémoire de rose"
Year: 1975

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

If love flies away
Blame only yourself
You ran away from school
For the bed of a King
If her white veil
Is no more than a fog
Do not hang yourself from the branch
As soon as it'll be dark
Do not hang yourself from the branch
As soon as it'll be dark, because

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

Keep deep inside
Deep inside yourself
A void, a place
Behind the feasts
Where to lay your head
In the wind of the evening
Rock those old dreams
Even if it's dark
Rock those old dreams
Even if it's dark, because

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

Georges Brassens - In the woods of my heart

Original Title: "Au bois de mon coeur"
Year: 1957

In the woods of Clamart there are some little flowers,
there are some little flowers,
there are some friends in the woods of my heart,
in the woods of my heart.

At the back of my courtyard I'm famous
I'm famous
for having a disreputable heart
A disreputable heart

In the woods of Vincennes there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
there are some friends in the woods of my heart,
in the woods of my heart.

When my cask runs out of wine
When my cask runs out of wine
In my cask,
They aren't afraid of drinking my water,
Of drinking my water.

In the woods of Meudon there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
There are friends in the woods of my heart,
In the woods of my heart.

They go with me to the town hall,
They go with me to the town hall,
To the town hall,
Everytime I get married,
That I get married.

In the woods of Saint-Cloud there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
There are friends in the woods of my heart,
In the woods of my heart.

Every time I die faithfully,
Faithfully,
They follow my funeral procession,
My funeral procession.

Some little flowers
Some little flowers
In the woods of my heart
In the woods of my heart

Live:

Léo Ferré - The loneliness

Original Title: "La solitude"
Year: 1971

I'm from a different country than yours, from another neighborhood, from another loneliness.
Today I invent myself some side roads.
I’m no longer local, I’m waiting for some mutants.
Biologically I’m working out with the idea
I made myself of Biology: I piss, I ejaculate, I cry.
It’s of highest urgency for us to shape our ideas
as if they were manufactured objects.
I am ready to provide you with the molds. But...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

The molds are made of a new texture, I'm warning you.
They were cast tomorrow morning.
If you haven’t from this very day the relative sentiment of your duration
It is futile to pass on to you, it's useless to look in front of you
Because the front is behind, night is day, and...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

It’s of utmost urgency for our laundromats,
At street corners, to be as imperturbable as the stop lights or free way indicators
The cops of the detersive will show you the box
Where you'll be at liberty to wash what you believe to be your conscience
And which is nothing more but an dependency of the neurophilic computer
That is serving you as brain. And yet..
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

Despair is a superior form of the critique.
For the moment, we’ll call it: “happiness”
The words which you are using no longer being “the words”
But some sort of canal through which
The illiterate people are easing their conscience. But...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

We will talk about the civil code later
For the moment, I would like to codify the uncodifiable.
I would like to measure your monarch butterfly democracies.
I would like to insert myself into the absolute void and become the unspoken,
The never happened, the non-virgin by lack of lucidity.
Lucidity is located in my pants!
In my pants!

Julos Beaucarne - Elskamp - Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine

Text: Max Elskamp
Year: 1967

My father discovered the poem by Max Elskamp and directly went over to Julos so that he'd put it in music as it was about their hometown. They both spent the night creating the song. Julos ended up publishing an extended play with four Max Elskamp poems.

Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine
Oh my mother from the Ecaussinnes
Now so far away who is asleep
Do you remember the summer days ?

Over there in August, when we were going
To visit our parents
In their castle of Belle-Tête²
Built in stones from our region

And who then made celebration
To you, their daughter, as well as to us
In this sweet Wallonia
Of clear summer, over there, in Hainaut

Where we were hearing some harmony
Like a voice coming from above
The noise of the cisels on the stones
And who sang under the hammers

Like bells ringing in the air
Or sea in the distance raising her waters
While like thunders
Were passing the trains under the elm trees

Oh my mother from the Ecaussines
It's your blood which speaks in me
And my soul which confides itself
In You, and of love, and of faith

Because you were to me like Mary
Even though I am not Jesus
And when you were gone
I knew I had lost everything

Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine
Oh my mother from the Ecaussinnes
Now so far away who is asleep
Do you remember the summer days ?

²Belle-Tête would mean "Pretty head" although I couldn't find trace of such a castle

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) :