Original Title:"Jour après jour"
Text: Martine Merri
Year: 1964
My life tears itself off page by page
Where is the time I've lost?
There is nothing left but images
Faded pictures, waned laughs
Drowned at the bottom of some marshes
And no one held them back
Regrets pile up one by one
The old frenzy is erased
I look deep in my mirror
The wrinkles of the last summer
The seasons pass one after the other
All my hopes have worn themselves out
Day after day, the days come back
I've been, I'll be, I am
Asleep at the hollow of the weeks
I've lost the taste of rain
And the flavour of the chrysanthemums
Sometimes wake me up at night
One by one the doors slam
Shut on a thousand and four loves
Nineteen sixty and four
I keep track day to day
Of the day when I would have to fight
To keep my last forever
I've climbed the steps one by one
Which leads to eternity
On the way, I've had feathers torn out
Who will be able to reattach them?
I'd like wings and the moon
To travel the other half
Original Title: "Art poétique"
Text: Paul Verlaine
Year: 1964
Music before anything else
And for that prefers the irregular verse
More vague and more soluble in air
Without anything in it which weights or poses
You must not either
Choose your words without some misunderstanding
Nothing is dearest than the grey song
Where the indecisive joins the precise
It's beautiful eyes behind veils
It's the bright day shivering at noon
It's, through an autumn sky cooled down,
The blue jumble of the clear stars!
Because we want the shade again
Not the color, just the shade!
Oh the shade only marries
The dream to the dream and the flute to the horn!
Run the farthest away from the murderous point
The cruel spirit, and the impure laugh
Which make the eyes of the Azure cry,
And all that garlic of low kitchen!
Take the eloquence and break its neck!
You will do well, in energetic spirit,
To give back the tempered rhyme
If we do not pay attention, up to where will it go?
Oh who will say the wrongs of the Rhyme?
Which death child or crazy negro
Has forged us that one penny jewel
Which sounds hollow and fake under the file?
Some music still and always!
Let your verse be the flown away thing
That we feel flees from a departed soul
Toward other skies and other loves
Let your verse be the good adventure
Scattered to the tense wind of the morningv
Which goes smelling of mind and thyme...
And everything else is literature.
Original Title: "Clair de lune"
Text: Paul Verlaine
Year: 1964
Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where goes charming Masques et Bergamasques*
Playing some luth and dancing and almost
Sad under their weird disguise
While singing on the minor mode
The victorious love and the opportune life
It does not seem like they believe in their happiness
And their song mixes with the moonlight
Under the clam moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Which makes the birds dream in the trees
And the water jets sob of extasy
Original Title: "Les Assis"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud
Year: 1964
Black with wens, pockmarked, eyes rimmed of rings
Greens, their curved fingers clutches at their thighbone,
The sinciput planted with vague spitefullities
Like the leprosian blossomings of old walls;
They have grafted, in epileptic loves,
Their whimsical skeletal structures with big black skelettons
Of their chairs; their feet to the scrawny rungs
Intertwines for the mornings and the evenings!
Those old men always have braids with their seats,
Feelings the vivacious suns percalise their skin,
Where, eyes at the window where the snows wither,
Shake of a painful shake of the toad.
And the seats are very kind tor them: mellowed
with brown, the straw breaks at the angles of the small of their back
The soul of the old suns lights up, wrapped up
In those braids of ears where the grains were fermenting
And the sitting ones, knees to the teeth, green pianists,
The ten fingers under their seat with rumors of drum,
Listen to themselves lapping some sad baracolles,
And their heads are going in some love rolls.
- Oh! Do not make them stand up! It's the wrecking...
They spring up, rumbling like slapped cats,
Opening their shoulderblades slowly, Oh rage!
The whole of their pants puffs out at their bloated waist
And you listen to them, banging their bald heads,
To the dark walls, planting and planting their crooked feet,
And the buttons of the outfit are fawn eyes
Which catch your eyes from the back of the corridors!
Then they have an invisible hand which kills:
When they return, their gaze filter that black venom
Which loads the suffering eye of the beaten bitch
And you sweat, caught in an atrocious funnel.
Seated back, fists drown in some dirty cuffs
The think about those who made them stand up
And, from dawn to the evening, clusters of tonsils
Under their puny chin stir to the point of bursting.
When the austere sleep has lowered their peaks,
They dream on the arms of their fertilized seats,
Real little loves of seats on the edge
Through which proud offices will be lined with;
Some ink flowers spitting pollen in commas
Rocks them, along long squatted chalives
Alike to the threads of gladioli the flight of the dragonflies
- And their limbs excites themselves to beards of ears
Original Title: "Pensionnaires"
Text: Paul Verlaine
Year: 1964
One was fifteen years old, the other was sixteen
Both were asleep in the same bedroom.
It was a very heavy evening of September
Frail, with blue eyes, some redness of a strawberry
Each left, to make themselves comfortable,
The thin shirt of a fresh perfume of amber
The youngest stretches her arms and arches her back
And her sister, her hands on her breasts, kisses her,
Then fall on her knees, then becomes wild
And tumultuous and crazy, and her mouth
Plunges under the blond gold, in the grey shadows;
And the child, in the meanwhile, makes a list
On her cute fingers some promised waltzes,
And, pink, smiles with innocence.
Original Title: "Ma bohème"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud
Year: 1964
I was going away, fists in my bursted pockets;
My cardigan as well was becamin ideal;
I was going under the sky, Muse! and I was loyal to you;
Oh! There! There! What an amount of splendid loves I have dreamt about!
My only pants had a wide hole
- Dreaming Tom Thumb, I was shelling in the running
Some rhymes. My inn was at Ursa Major
- My stars had a sweet frills to the sky
And I was listening to them, sitting on the side of the roads,
Those good evenings of September where I was feeling some drops
Of dew on my forehead, like a wine of vigor;
Where, rhyming in the middle of fantastic shadows,
Like lyres, I was pulling on the elastics
Of my hurt shoes, a foot near my heart!
Here are some fruits, some leaves, some leaves and some branches
And then here is my heart which is beating for you only
Do not tear it with your two white hands
And to your eyes so beautiful may the humble present be sweet
May the humble present be sweet.
I arrive all covered with dew still
that the morning wind comes to freeze on my forehead
Allow that my tiredness at your feet rested
Dreams of the dear moments that are going to refresh it
That are going to refresh it.
On your young breast let my head roll
All sonorous still of your latest kisses
Let it be appeased from the good tempest
And that I sleep a little since you are resting
Since you are resting.
It's raining over Nantes
Give me your hand
The sky of Nantes
Makes my heart despondent
A morning like that one
Barely one year ago already
The city had that pallid colouring
When I went out of the station
Nantes was then unknown to me
I had never been there
That message had been needed
For me to do that trip:
"Madam, be at the rendez-vous
Twenty five Grange-au-Loup² street
Be quick, there is little hope
He asked to see you."
At the time of his last hour
After many years of wandering
He came back to me right in the heart
His cry pierced the silence
Since he had gone away
For a long time, I had hoped for him
That vagabond, that missing person
Here he was back to me
Twenty five Grange-au-Loup street
I remember the rendez-vous
And I engraved in my memory
That bedroom at the end of a corridor
Sitting near a fireplace
I saw four men standing up
The light was cold and white
They were wearing Sunday clothes
I didn't ask any question
To those peculiar companions
I said nothing, but from their gazes
I understood that it was too late
Yet I was at the rendez-vous ³
Twenty five Grange-au-Loup street
But he never saw me again
He had already disapeared
There, you know the story
He came back one evening
And it was his last trip
And it was his last shore
He wanted before dieing
To warm himself up with my smile
But he died that same night
Without a farewell, without an "I love you"
At the path that borders the sea
Lying in the garden of stones
I want that tranquil he rests
I layed him down beneath the roses
My father, my father
It's raining over Nantes
And I remember
The sky of Nantes
Makes my heart despondent
²"Barn of the wolves" is the litteral translation of the street name
³ The "live" version above is slight different here:
"Twenty five Grange-au-Loup street
He wasn't at the rendez-vous anymore
He had died that same night
Without a farewell, without an "I love you"
There, you know the story
Of the man who came from nowhere
And who came back like a wreck
From the end of his last trip
Of the vagabond, the badly loved
Who when remiscing the past
wanted before falling asleep
To warm himself up from my smile
Original Title: "Les Corbeaux"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud
Year: 1964
Lord, when the meadow is cold,
When in the knocked down hamlets,
The lengthy angelus went quiet...
on the nature which flowers were shed
Have swoop down from the big skies
The dear delicious crows
The dear delicious crows
Strange army with severe shouts
The cold winds attack your nests!
You, along the yellowed rivers,
On the roads with old ordeals
On the ditches and, on the holes.
Disperse! Rally!
Disperse! Rally!
By the thousands, on the fields of France,
Where dead people of the day before yesterday are asleep
Circle, won't you, during the winter,
So that every passer-by think again!
Be then the crier of duty,
Oh our funereal black bird!
Oh our funereal black bird!
But, saints of the sky, on top of the oak tree,
Lost mast in the charmed evening,
Leave the warblers of May
To those who are chained deep in the woods
In the grass from where none can flee,
The defeat without future
The defeat without future
The song has already been translated, even sung in English by David Bowie (you can find Bowie's version here) but the lyrics differs for the sake of the song. It's a very powerful song so I am trying to give the most colourful yet literal translation.
Original title: "Amsterdam"
Year: 1964
In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who sing
The dreams that haunt them
Off Amsterdam
In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who sleep
Like oriflammes along the bleak banks
In the port of Amsterdam
There are the sailors who die
Full of beer and of tragedies
At first lights
In the port of Amsterdam
There are the sailors who are born
In the thick warmth
Of the ocean languors
In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who eat,
On too white tablecloths,
Dripping fishes.
They show you teeth
to bite into fortune,
To wane the moon,
To gobble up shrouds.
And it smells of cod
even in the heart of the fries
That their big hands invite
To come back in extra
Then get up while laughing
In a sound of tempest
shut their flies again
And go out while belching
In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who dance
While rubbing their paunch
on the paunch of the women
And they turn and they dance
Like spit out suns
In the torn up sound
Of a rancid accordion
They twist round their neck
So they can better hear themselves laugh
Until, all of a sudden, the accordion exhales
Then, with a solemn gesture
Then, with a proud gaze
They bring back their Batavian women
under the bright light
In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who drink
And who drink and drink again
And who drink once more
And they drink to the health
Of the whores of Amsterdam
whom there are many moreover
In short, they drink to the ladies
Who give them their pretty body
Who give them their virtue
For a single gold coin
And when they have drunk well
Stick their nose up to the sky
Blow their nose in the stars
And they piss like I cry
On the unfaithful women
Original Title: "Je vous vois encore"
Text: Paul Verlaine
Year: 1964
I still see you! In a summer dress
white and yellow with curtain's flowers.
But you didn't have anymore the wet cheerfulness
Of the most delirious of our short futures.
The small bride and the elder girl
Had reappeared with the clothes
And it was already our fate
That looked at me under your veil
Be forgiven! And it's the reason why,
I keep, alas! with some pride,
In my memory, which cuddled you,
the side lightning that flew from your eye.
Original title: "Mon rêve familier"
Text: Paul Verlaine
Year: 1964
I often make that strange and penetrating dream
Of an unknown woman and whom I love and who loves me
And who is, everytime, not entirely the same
Nor quite another and who loves me and understands me
Because she understands me and my heart transparent
For her alone, alas!, stops being a problem.
For her alone, and the sweatiness of my pallid forehead
She only knows how to refresh them while crying.
Is she brown haired, blond or redhaired? I don't know.
Her name? I remember it's sweet and resonant,
Like the ones of the loved ones who have been exiled by life.
Her gaze is alike to the gaze of the statues
And, for her voice, distant, and calm, and deep, it has
the inflexion of the dearest voices who went silent.
Original Title: "Un soir de mai"
Text: Maurice Fanon
Year: 1964
I remember
An evening of May
Not very long
That I had put
My slippers in yours
And your bed in mine
An evening of May
Already in bed
Done loving
And in your arms
Like a wet blade of grass
I was swinging
Two men
Entered in the bedroom
Two men
The hat askew
Two men
Without knocking, they entered
The boot first
The police and its clerk
Two men
I think they hit you
And on my lips
The last kiss
That you gave me
Without kissing me
Handcuffs around the hands
and the eyes in mine
And in my heart
That smile in tears
That you had
When they took you away
Like a wet flag
that was swaying
Gentlemen
Joined in
Gentlemen
the funny look
Gentlemen
The robe and the rapier
The cross and the benner
The sentence and its clerk
Gentlemen
I think they killed you
If you come back from it
O, I promise you
I will make you
a very beautiful evening of May
My slippers in yours
And your bed in mine
An evening of May
Already in bed
Done loving
And in your arms
Like a wet blade of grass
I was swinging
Original Title: "Je suis plus près de toi"
Text: "Luc Bérimont"
Music: "Lise Médini"
Year: 1964
I plant a dry tree in the belly of the fire
The worn wick of the day blackens under the rain
The evening's noises are born. I hear the oxen come in
The pendulum has ground minutes of soot
I'm closer to you
Who confuses the route
And who lets my voice
Drift on the ponds
I'm closer to you
Than the wind in the towers
Than the disgust of the days
which sits at the table and taunts me
I will know from now on how to suffer from love
Lost on the edge of the meadows in the muds of fall
I knew the sorrow in Paris in the yards
It's well a similar pain, a similar trick
I'm closer to you
Who confuses the route
And who lets my voice
Drift on the ponds
I'm closer to you
Than the wind in the towers
Than the disgust of the days
Which sits at the table and taunts me
Winter is a dead king feathered with crows
He opens, he was expecting me, he laughs at me like a brother
The bedrooms are adorned with a checker of old bones
The age I have tonight weights like a stone
I'm closer to you
Who confuses the route
And who lets my voice
Drift on the ponds
I'm closer to you
Than the wind in the towers
Than the disgust of the days
Which sits at the table and taunts me
Original Title: "L'espoir luit comme un brin de paille dans l'étable"
Text: Paul Verlaine (1873)
Year: 1964
Hope shines like a wisp of straw in the stable
What do you fear of the wasp drunk with its mad flight?
See, the sun always rises in clouds in some hole
Why wouldn't you fall asleep, elbow on the table?
Poor pale soul, at least this frozen water from the well
Drink it. Then sleep afterward. Come on, see, I'm staying,
And I'd would pamper the dreams of your nap
And you will hum like a cradled child
Noon strikes. For goodness' sake, go away madam.
He's asleep. It's surprising how women's footsteps
Resonate to the brain of the poor souls.
Noon strikes. I had (the plants) watered in the bedroom.
Go, sleep! Hope shines like a stone in a cavity.
Ah, when will the roses of September blossom again ?
Original Title: "Dis, quand reviendras-tu?"
Year: 1964
For how many days, for how many nights
For how long have you been gone again
You told me : "This time, it's the last trip
for our torn hearts, it's the last wrecking
In the spring you'll see I'll be back
The spring, it's pretty to talk about love,
We'll go together see the florished gardens
and will stroll in the streets of Paris"
Say, when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
That all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
That all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.
Spring has fled for a long time already,
creak the dead leaves, burn the wood fires,
To see Paris so beautiful at this end of fall,
Suddenly I grow languid, I dream, I shiver,
I reel, I capsize, and like the old refrain,
I go, I come, I veer, I'm turning around, I'm dragging myself,
Your image is haunting me, I'm whispering to you
And I'm lovesick and I'm yearning for you.
Say, when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
That all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
That all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.
Even though I still love you, even though I always love you,
Even though you are the only one I love, even though I love you of love,
If you do not understand that you must come back
I will make of us both my most beautiful memories
I'll take the road again, the world marvels me
I'll warm myself up at another sun,
I'm not of those girls who die of sorrow
I do not have the virtue of sailors' wives
Say, but when will you be back
Say, do you at least know it
How all the time that passes,
Can't be caught up,
How all the time lost
Can't be caught up anymore.
