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:

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

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

Léo Ferré - Aragon - Blues

Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1961

We stay up, we think about everything, about nothing
We write verses, prose
We have to fiddle something about
while waiting for the day that is coming

The mist when the morning breaks
Takes away from the windows their breath
It was like that when Verlaine
Here slowly passed away

Several are dead, several alive
We do not all have the same cards
Before the other I have to go
Them out I remained dreaming
Not everybody is Cézanne
We will content ourselves with little
We cry and we laugh as we can
In that herbal tea universe

"Young man what do you fear
You will grow old somehow"
Was saying the shadow on the high wall
Painted by a Breughel of fairground
We stay up, we think about everything, about nothing
We write verses, prose
We have to fiddle something about
while waiting for the day that is coming
We stay up, we think about everything, about nothing
We write verses, prose
We have to fiddle something about
while waiting for the day that is coming

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Jacques Brel - The drunkard

Original Title: "L'ivrogne"
Year: 1961

Friend, fill in my drink
One more and I go
One more and I am going
No, I am not crying
I sing and I am joyfull
But it hurts to be me
Friend, fill in my drink
Friend, fill in my drink

Let's drink to your health
You who can say so well
That everything can be fixed
That she will come back
No matter if you are a liar
Innkeeper without tendernes
I will be drunk in an hour
I will be without sadness

Let's drink to the health of
The friends and laughs
That I will find back
Who will come back to me
No matter if those lords
leave me on the floor
I will be drunk in an hour
I will be without anger

Friend, fill in my drink
One more and I go
One more and I am going
No, I am not crying
I sing and I am joyfull
But it hurts to be me
Friend, fill in my drink
Friend, fill in my drink

Let's drink to my health
Let people drink with me
Let people come to dance
Let my joy be shared
No matter if the dancers
Leave me alone under the moon
I will be drunk in one hour
I will be without grudge

Let's drink to the young girls
Who remain for me to love
Let's drink already to the girls
Whom I will make cry
And no matter for the flowers
That they will refuse me
I will be drunk in an hour
I will be without passion

Friend, fill in my drink
One more and I go
One more and I am going
No, I am not crying
I sing and I am joyfull
But it hurts to be me
Friend, fill in my drink
Friend, fill in my drink

Let's drink to the whore
Who wrung my heart
Let's drink full with sorrow
Let's drink full with tears
And no matter for the tears
That rain from me tonight
I will be drunk in an hour
I will be without memory

Let's drink night after night
As I will be too ugly
For the slightest Sylvie
For the slightest regret
Let's drink as it's time
Let's drink just to drink
I will be fine in an hour
I will be without hope

Friend, fill in my drink
One more and I go
One more and I am going
No, I am not crying
Everything is getting better already
I sing and I am joyfull
Friend, fill in my drink

Jean Ferrat - Two children under the sun

Deux enfants au soleil jean ferrat
Original Title: "Deux enfants au soleil"
Text: Claude Delécluse

Year: 1961

The sea constantly rolled its pebbles
The hair undone, they looked at each other.
In the smell of pine trees, sand and thyme
that bathed the beach.
They looked at each other. Both without talking.
As if they were drinking the water from their faces
And it was as if everything started again.
The same innocence made them tremble.
In front of the marvellous, the miraculous
Journey of love.

Outside they spent the night
One against the other they slept.
The sea rocked them for a long time.
And when they woke up.
It was as if they were born
In the first morning of the world.
The sea constantly rolled its pebbles.
When they ran. In the water bare feet.
Under the shadow of the pine trees. They held hands.
And without defending themselves. They fell in the water.
Like two birds.
Under the warm kiss of their tender mouth.
Life, hope and freedom
With the marvellous, the miraculous
Journey of love.

Isabelle Aubret's version:
http://www.ina.fr/video/I05061305

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - I hear, I hear

Original title: "J'entends J'entends"
Text: Louis Aragon

Year: 1961

I have seen so many people who went away
They were only asking for fire
They were content with so little
They had so little anger

I hear their steps, I hear their voices
Which tell banal things
Like one could read in the newspapers
Like one could tell in the evening at home

What is being done of you men and women
Oh tender stone, worn out early
And your broken appearances
Looking at you tears my soul off

Things go like they go
Time to time earth shakes
Misfortune ressembles to misfortune
It's deep, deep, deep

You would like to believe in the blue sky
I know that feeling
I believe in it myself sometimes
Like the lark does in the mirror

I believe in it sometimes, I confess
Up to not believing my own ears
Ah, I am indeed your equal
Ah, I am indeed the same as you

As you, like the grains of sand
Like the blood always shed
Like the fingers always hurt
Ah, I am indeed your fellow man

I'd have liked so much to help you
You who seem to be other myselves
But the words that I sow to the black wind
Who knows if you hear them

Everything is getting lost and nothing moves you
Nor my words nor my hands
And you go on your way
Without knowing what my mouth says

Your hell is nevertheless mine
We live under the same rule
And when you bleed, I bleed
And I die in your same bonds

What time is it, how is the weather
however I'd have liked so much
to win for you, losing for me
Having been useful maybe

It's a modest and crazy dream
It'd have been better to keep it quiet
You will bury me with it
Like a star at the bottom of a hole

Cora Vaucaire's version:


All poems written by Louis Aragon

Hélène Martin - The man sentenced to death

Original Title: "Le Condamné à mort"
Text: Jean Genet (1942)
Year: 1961

On my neck without armor and without hate, my neck
Let my hand lighter and more solemn than a widow
brush under my collar, without your heart to be moved
Let your teeth lay their wolf's smile

Oh come, my beautiful sun, Oh come my Spanish night,
Come in my eyes that will be dead tomorrow
Come, open my door, bring me your hand
Lead me far from here to wander in our mind

The sky can awake, the stars florish
Nor the flowers sigh, and of the meadows the black grass
welcome the dew where the morning is going to drink
The church tower can ring: I alone will die.

Oh come my sky of rose, Oh my blond basket!
Visit in your night your man sentenced to death.
Tear your flesh away, kill, climb, bite,
but come! Lay your cheek against my round head

We hadn't finished to talk about love
We hadn't finished to smoke our gitanes
We may wonder why the courts sentence
An assassin so beautiful that he makes the day grow pale

Love come on my mouth ! Love open your doors!
Cross the corridors, come down, walk lightly,
Fly in the stairs, more supple than a shepherd
More carried by the air than a dead leave's flight.

Oh go through the walls: if you have to walk on the edge
of the roofs, of the oceans: Cover yourself with light,
make use of threat, make use of prayer
But come, oh my frigate, one hour before my death.

Marc Ogeret's version (1970):

Philippe Léotard - Louis Aragon - Is this how men live?

Original Title: "Est-ce ansi que les hommes vivent"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Music: Léo Ferré
Year: 1961

Everything is matter of scenery
Changing of bed, changing of body
What for? As it's again
I who betrays myself
I who drags myself and lie around
And my shadow undresses itself
In the arms alike of girls
Where I believed I found a country
Light heart, changing heart, heavy heart
The time to dream is quite short
What should be done of my nights
What should be done of my days
I had nor love nor residence
Nowhere where I live or die
I was passing like the rumor
I fell asleep like the noise

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

It was an unreasonable weather
The deads had been put on the table
We were making sand castles
We took wolves for dogs
Everything was changing pole and shoulder
Was the play funny or not
I if I didn't hold my part well
It was because I didn't understand anything

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

In the Hohenzollern district
Between the Saar and the barracks
Like the lucerne's flowers
Blossomed Lola's breasts
She had a swallow's heart
On the brothel's couch
I come to lie down beside her
among the hiccups of the pianola

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

The sky was grey with clouds
There flew wild gooses
That were shouting death in passing
Above the houses of the quays
I saw them through the window
Their sad song entered in my being
And I thought I was recognizing
some Rainer Maria Rilke
She was brown and though pale
Her hair fell over her hips
And the week and the sunday
She opened her naked arms to everyone
She had earthenware eyes
She worked valiantly
For an artilleryman from Mainz
Who never came back from it

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

There are other soldiers in town
And the night the civilians go up
Put mascara on your eyelashes
Lola who will soon go away
It was in april at five o'clock
At daylight that in your heart
A dragoon plunged his knife

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

Léo Ferré's version:


Catherine Sauvage's version:


Monique Morelli's version:

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Monique Morelli - Louis Aragon - Elsa

Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Music: Léo Ferré
Year: 1961 (Ferré's version), 1966 (Morelli's version)

Is it then sufficient for you to appear
of that look you have when tying
Your hair up, that touching gesture,
For me to revive and recognise
A world inhabited by the singing
Elsa my love, my youth

Oh strong and sweet like wine
Alike to the sun of the windows
You give me back the caress of being
You give me back the thirst and the hunger
To live still and to experience
our story until the end

It's a miracle to be together
The light on your cheek
That around you the wind plays
Everytime if I see you I tremble
Like for his first date
A young man looking like me

For the first time your mouth
For the first time your voice
from a wing to the peak of the woods
The tree simmers down to the stump
It's always the first time
When your dress while passing touches me

My life in truth begins
The day I met you
You whose arms were able to block
Its atrocious way to my dementia
And who showed me the land
That kindness alone sows

You came at the heart of helplessness
to chase the bad fevers out
And I've blazed like a juniper
At Christmas between your fingers
I'm really born from your lip
My life originates from you

So, is it thus sufficient for you to appear
of that look you have when tying
Your hair up that touching gesture
For me to revive and recognise
A world inhabited by the singing
Elsa my love, my youth

Léo Ferré's version:

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Léo Ferré - Louis Aragon - The red poster

Ferré's version
slightly modified translation from wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'affiche_rouge_(poem)
Text: Louis Aragon (inspired by Missak Manouchian's last letter) in 1955
Year: 1961

You didn't beg for glory nor tears
Nor the organ music, nor the last rites
Eleven years already, how quickly eleven years go by
You simply made use of your weapons
Death does not dazzle the eyes of partisans.

You had your pictures on the walls of our cities
Black with beard and night, dishevelled, threatening
The poster, that seemed like a bloodstain,
because your names are hard to pronounce,
Sought to sow fear in the passers-by.

No one seemed to be enclined to see you French
People went without eyes for you the whole day,
But at time of curfew, wandering fingers
Wrote under your pictures "Fallen for France"
And it made the gloomy mornings different.

Everything had the unvarying colour of frost
In late February for your last moments
And that's when one of you said calmly:
"Happiness to all, happiness to those who will survive,
I die without hate in me for the German people.

"Farewell to sorrow, farewell to pleasure. Farewell the roses,
Farewell life, the light and the wind.
Get married, be happy and think of me often
You who will remain in the beauty of things
When all will be over later in Erevan.

"A broad winter sun lights up the hill
How beautiful nature is and how my heart breaks
Justice will come over our triumphant footsteps,
My Mélinée, oh my love, my orphan girl,
And I tell you to live and to bear a child."

There were twenty-three of them when the rifles flowered
Twenty-three who gave their hearts before it was time,
Twenty-three foreigners and yet our brothers
Twenty-three lovers of living to the point of dieing for it
Twenty-three who shouted "France!" as they fell.

Monique Morelli's version

Jacques Bertin's version

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Léo Ferré - If you go away

Original Title: "Si tu t'en vas"
Year: 1961

If you go away
If you go away one day
You'll forget me.
Love words
Do not travel.
If you go away
The sea will still come towards the shore,
Wild flowers,
In the heavy wheat,
will still come...

If you go away
If you go away one day
You will forget me
Love wounds
Do not open up
If you go away
The spring will still swell the river
New loves,
Towards the summer weather,
will always go...

If you go away
If you go away, one day
Everything will end,
Love things
Do not live
If you go away
Death will always triumph over the prime of life
It's her work
Despite love
Which always dies...

If you go away
If you go away, one day
Remember
Love words
Do not fly away.
If you go away
Beyond life towards the light
Where the prayers
Do not arrive anymore
They are lost...

If you go away
If you go away one day
In those areas
We'll talk about love
Like in the old days...
If it's possible!

Monique Morelli - Aragon - Ferré - It would have taken

Original Title: "Il n'aurait fallu"
Music: Léo Ferré
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1961 (Léo Ferré's version), 1966 (Morelli's version)

It would have taken
just another moment
For death to come
But a bare hand
then came
which took mine

Who gave back
their lost colors
to the days, to the weeks
Its reality
to the immense summer
of human things

I, who trembled
Always, I don't know
from which anger
Two arms have been enough
to give my life
a big necklace of air

Just a movement
That gesture while sleeping
soft which is brushing on me
A calm breath
Less than a dew
against my shoulder

A forehead resting
on me in the night
two big opened eyes
and everything looked to me
like a wheat field
in this universe

A tender garden
In the grass where suddenly
Verbena is growing
And my deceased heart
is born again to the perfume
which makes shadow soft

It would have taken
just another moment
For death to come
But a bare hand
then came
which took mine

Léo Ferré's version
Catherine Sauvage's version:

Jacques Douai's version:


All poems written by Louis Aragon

Léo Ferré - Aragon - I love you so much

Original Title: "Je t'aime tant"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1961

My dark love of bitter orange
My song of waterlock and of wind
My piece of shadow
where the sea comes,
To die while dreaming.

My beautiful month of August which sky rains
Stars on the calm mounds.
My daydreaming with palm walls
Where the air is blue

My golden arms, my weak wonders
Let my thirst and hunger be revived
Necklace, necklace of the endless evenings
Where the heart stays awake

Do we know what happens
It may well be soon after
That the coat will be thrown
upon my face

Cut my throat and the peonies
Quick bring my wine, my blood
To please her like in passing
Are doing the oats

I have so little time left
To go at the bottom of myself
And to shout: "God, how I love you
I love you so much, I love you so much".

All poems written by Louis Aragon
Hélène Martin's version (more complete & named The Black Song/La Chanson Noire):