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

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:

Henri Tachan - Like a cold

Original Title: "Comme un rhume"
Music: Jean-Pierre Roseau
Year: 1967

You, you came to me. You, you came to me like a cold
Completely naked, completely naked, the brunette's way
I should have closed my window but, but it does not matter
You would have come in, you'd have crawled under my door

You, you surprised me, by my bedside like a cold
You my illness, my epidemic, you my brunette
I should have known, I should have expected that bug
But I could not see, in my dark bedroom, anything else but your dress

And you slipped me and you've left me with your bacillus
At the paced pulse, at the insane rythm of your eyelashes
I should have pushed, I should have chased away that fever
But I was moved, but I was trapped like an hare

Then you went away, little by little, my migraine
And I, I healed under the surgical knife of the weeks
Mars' sun dispels that bitch of haze
And days which pass, little by little, erase the colds

But since then and that gush of wind on my path
Way more often than before I often cough and dread
To still keep half buttercup half chrysanthemum
The woman who sleeps at the bottom of my body like a germ
The woman who sleeps at the bottom of my body and whom I love

Graeme Allwright - Leonard Cohen - Suzanne

Text: Leonard Cohen (1966)
Year: 1967

Suzanne takes you to listen to the mermaids
She takes you by the hand
To spend an endless night
You know she is half crazy
That's why you want to stay

On a silver plate
She serves you jasmine Tea
And when you want to tell her
That you have no love for her
She calls you in her waves
And lets the sea answer
That you have always been in love with her

You want to stay by her side
Now you are not afraid anymore
To travel with closed eyes
A flame is burning in your heart

He was a fisherman who came over land
Who has watched a very long time
From the top of a lonely tower
And when he understood that only
Lost men were seeing him
He said he would sail
Until the waves free us
But he himself was broken
Way before the sky opens
Neglected and almost a man
He sank under your wisdom
Like a stone

You want to stay by her side
Now you are not afraid anymore
To travel with closed eyes
A flame is burning in your heart

Suzanne takes you to listen to the mermaids
She takes you by the hand
To spend an endless night
The sun is flowing like honey
Over Our Lady of the Tears
She shows you where to look for
Among the trashes and the flowers
In the weeds there are dreams
Of children in the early morning
Who lean over towards love
They always lean over like that
And Suzanne holds the mirror

You want to stay by her side
Now you are not afraid anymore
To travel with closed eyes
A strange wound in your heart

Anne Vanderlove - Tell me

Original Title: "Dites-moi"
Year: 1967

Tell me, you had it though the heart for laughing
Tell me, you had it though the heart between your teeth
And then from the heart to the eyes so many things to say
When you were the color of the Grand Meaulnes and the wind
But from sand to dunes, and from falls to rains
Grand Meaulnes fled away
And your frail teenage years followed him

Tell me, you had it though the heart for laughing
Tell me, you had it though the heart between your teeth
When you were shown the big words in the books
Those that toppled down the walls and make children grow older
But the children are dead and the rifles rusty
The neglected paths
And already on the stone
Grass closed in

Tell me, you had it though the heart for laughing
Tell me, you had it though the heart between your teeth
And then from the heart to the eyes so many things to say
That you could have well done better really
Tell me, what have you done with so many seasons?
Your gardens, without further ado
are tearing your heart up
With heavy blows of thistle

Léo Ferré - You'd put the universe

Original Title: "Tu mettrais l'univers"
Text: Charles Baudelaire (1857)
Year: 1967

You'd shove the whole universe in your alleyway
Impure woman! Boredom makes your soul cruel.
To exercise your teeth at this singular game,
Everyday, you need a heart added to your rack.
Your eyes, lit up like shops
Or blazing yew trees in public feasts,
Blatantly use of a feigned power,
Without ever knowing the law of their beauty.

Blind and deaf machine, fertile in cruelties!
Salutary instrument, drinker of the blood of the world,
How aren't you ashamed and how haven't you,
In front of all the mirrors, seen your charms fade?
The greatness of that ill where you believe yourself skillful
Never then has made you back away in terror,
When nature, tall in its hidden designs,
Makes use of you, oh woman, oh queen of sins,
- Of you, vile animal, - to knead a genius?

Oh miry greatness! Magnificent ignominy!

Nicoletta - It's dead, the sun.

Original Title: "Il est mort le soleil"
Year: 1967

It's dead! The sun is dead!
When you left me. Summer is dead!
Love and the sun are the same.

It's dead! The sun is dead!
And I am the only one to mourn
And daylight does not pass my threshold anymore

Yesterday, the color I liked the best
It was the color of your eyes
It was the color of the sea
It was yesterday

It's dead! The sun is dead!
Shadow is on my life
In my heart: the rain
And my soul is dressing up in grey

Yesterday, we were sleeping on the warm sand
Yesterday, the weather was fine for us
The weather was fine even in winter
It was yesterday

It's dead! The sun is dead!
When you left me. Summer is dead!
Love and the sun are the same.
It's the same.

Other version:

Serge Reggiani - Sarah (The woman who is in my bed)

Original Title: "La femme qui est dans mon lit"
Year: 1967

If you meet her, weirdly dressed
Dragging in the gutter an heel taken off
And the head and the eye low like a wounded pigeon
Sirs do not spit swearwords nor filth
To the painted face of that poor impur one
Who goddess Famine has one evening of winter
Forced to lift her petticoats in open air

That Bohemia is my good, my wealth
My pearl, my jewel, my queen
My Duchess

The woman who is in my bed, isn't twenty years old for a long time
The eyes rung by years, by loves day-to-day
The mouth worn out by kisses too often and too badly given
The bleak complexion despite the blusher more pale than a moon's spot

The woman who is in my bed, isn't twenty years old for a long time
The breasts so heavy of too much love do not wear the name of baits
The body weary, too caressed, too often, but badly loved
The back stooped seems to carry memories she had to run away from

The woman who is in my bed, isn't twenty years old for a long time
Don't laugh, don't touch her, keep your tears and your sarcasms
When night reunites us, her body, her hands offer themselves to mine
And its her heart covered with tears and wounds which reassures me.

Another version:

Jean Ferrat - Louis Aragon - Happy the one who dies of loving

Original Title: "Heureux celui qui meurt d'aimer"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1967

Oh my garden of fresh water and shadow
My dance of being, my dark heart
My sky of the countless stars
My smallboat in the distance, sweet to row
Happy the one who becomes deaf
To the song if it's not about his love
Blind to the day after his day
His eyes on you alone closed

Happy the one who dies of loving
Happy the one who dies of loving

To love so strongly, his lips closed
That he does not need anything
But the memory of the roses
Forever perfumed of you.
The one who dies even with pain
To whom without you the world is delusion
And holds nothing else from it but your colors
It's sufficient for him that he named you.

Happy the one who dies of loving
Happy the one who dies of loving

My child, he says, my sweet soul
The time to know you, Oh woman
Eternity is nothing else but a swoon
To the fire of which I am consumed
He said, Oh woman and may he keep quiet
The name which resembles to the glowing embers,
To the mouth red, to the strawberry
Forever in his teeth formed.

Happy the one who dies of loving
Happy the one who dies of loving

He said: Oh woman, and comes to an end
So goes life, so does the dream
And be it on the Place de Grève
Or in the accustomed bed,
Young lovers you whose age it is,
Between the round and the journey,
Crazy ones sparing yourselves thinking yourselves wise
Shout to those who want to blame you

Happy the one who dies of loving
Happy the one who dies of loving

Another version:


all poems written by Louis Aragon

Anne Vanderlove - Ballad in November

Original Title: "Ballade en Novembre"
Year: 1967

Leave me to my memories
Leave me to my dead loves
It's time to close the door
It's getting time to go to sleep
I wasn't always well attired
I had the hair in the eyes
But this is how he took me
I think that he loved me a little

It's raining
On the garden, on the shore
And if I have water in the eyes
That's because it's raining over my face

The North wind which piles up
Has fun alone in my hair
I wasn't always very beautiful
But I think that he loved me a little
My dress still has its mends
And I still have the hair all over the place
But that's how he took me
I think that I loved him a lot

It's raining
On the garden, on the shore
And if I have water in the eyes
That's because it's raining over my face

If I have melted so many candles
Since the time we saw each other
And if I remain faithful to him
What good does me so much virtue?
Leave me to my dead loves!
Leave me to my memories
But before closing the door
Leave me the time to laugh about it
The time to try to smile about it

It's raining
On the garden, on the shore
And if I have water in the eyes
That's because it's raining over my face

Jacques Bertin - Should one be crazy

Original Title: "Faut-il être fou"
Year: 1967

Should one be crazy for having loved the wrinkles of an old Spaniard?
Be crazy for having quivered at the tears of a blind gypsy woman?
Be crazy for having leaped at the fist raised of an old Quixote?
Here, fifteen hundred Moorish sacred hearts and the flag of Charles V
Climb to nail my eyes at the wall of an Andalusian convent

At home there are heavy fountains and after season apples
Fifteen kids yearning for dreams go there to spring songs up
At home of crazy legs girls go along the mornings of thistles
Pray Sint Anne in her chapels in her rose and gorses bouquets
At home every girl is called Anne and they all have white breasts
Heavy thighs and vast hips, I lead my herds there to dream
At home, I have four friends, four poets: Pierre, Jacques, Yves and Joël
Pierre, Jacques, Yves and Joël, oh, let's not have me forgotten
Let's not have forgotten our girls, our mischiefs and our songs

Here, behind an old stone low wall, I wait for death in a sleep
Populated with the milk of white women at the cold of an horizontal marble
THe night, the night on my stone rifle I bite Andalusian horses
I hurt gypsys in their vagina, I kiss red spaniels
And sweet white gazelles, and I burn orange trees

Here, there is a shy kid with tulles of princesses
Who burns my Republicans
Last morning of my youth
Torn with rape and blood
Death is coming, bleak morning
Eighteen nights lead me there
Eighteen dreams to come there
Eighteen dreams to die there

I think to all my years
I think to all my gazelles
My abandonned gazelles
Pierre, Jacques, Yves and Joël
We have forgotten each others well
Here is the Bitch who is coming and I have the eternity for myself
For a song in the ground where love is finally real

Jacques Brel - My childhood

Original Title: "Mon enfance"
Year: 1967

My child hood passed
From greyness to silences
From fake bows
To lack of battles
The winter I was in the belly
Of the big house
Which had dropped anchor
At the north among the bulrushes
The summer half naked
But completely modest
I became Indian
Although already sure
that my full up uncles
Had stolen me my Far West

My childhood passed
Women in the kitchen
Where I was dreaming of China
Grew old in meals
The men at the cheese
Were wrapping themselves with tobacco
Taciturn and wise Flemish
And didn't know me
I who every night
Kneeled for nothing
Played in arpeggios my sorrow
At the bottom of the too big bed
I wanted to take a train
That I have never taken

My childhood passed
From servant to servant
I was already surprised
That they weren't plants
I was surprised still
of those family circles
Strolling from dead to dead
And which are dressed by mourning
I was mostly surprised
To be of that herd
That was teaching me to cry
That I knew too well
I had the eye of the shepherd
But the heart of the lamb

My childhood blew up
It was the teenage years
And the wall of silence
One morning shattered
It was the first flower
And the first girl
The first kind one
And the first fear
I was flying I was swear
I swear that I was flying
My heart opened the arms
I wasn't a barbarian nomore

And war arrived

And here we are tonight.

Jacques Bertin - Spin

Original Title: "File"
Year: 1967

Spin, spin with your febrile fingers
Spin your heart all entangled
You will make a skein out of it
an overall ball
Then you'd make a jumper out of it
To keep you warm in winter

So goes the wild children
Fearing tomorrow to get cold
They knit mischiefs for themselves
To protect themselves from the sun
They cover themselves with unreality
To protect themselves from the sun

The famous jumper can wait
Here is not the main thing
It's in the summer that resembles us
Whatever we said, whatever we did
Oh, remember of the essential
Of your naked skin under the sun

I leave you with your distaff
Your needles against the summer
I have run too much stitch after stich
I wanted to undress you
Or dress myself alike to you
I had forgotten the essential

I am not in a hurry my beauty
I smoke the pipe and the time
I wait for you to undress
And to give me your clothes
I will unpick them
When I will have time at Chirstmas
Stripping you naked under the essential
I will give you the sun

Jacques Bertin - Lovers

Original Title: "Amants"
Year: 1967

Lovers who glide in the streets, the passer-bys are like a cloud
Lovers all bathed in tenderness
Who land on our sidewalks before the start of the seasons
And who flap while pecking the sorry bread of the low autumns avenues
Are making a dream journey after their wedding at the poplar trees
Toward countries of winds and seaweeds where the seasons would stop

I know that the seasons stop at the first look of the lovers
I know that I will see there all my scandals over death and the living
dissolve with our twenties
I know that lumps, droppings and white marble
Entire lives have been seen there be dissolved into sand and wind
That sparrows burnt to a cinder have been seen revived there
And that dungeons have been seen there letting themselves be converted into moss
That as many fires of blond heads are being lit at the eyes of the Saint-Jean

I know that seasons stop between the lips of the lovers
I know that here is a pond where drowning is deliverance
And that it's well the only pond where which bottom isn't looked for
That only drowning is expected from it at the beginning of God and time
Because everything becomes eternity and every moment becomes vapour
Inflexible grass, air and grape, words hang on to nothing
And of our wet flight immensely the words are amazed
Grass, woman, flesh and grape, the words mean nothing no more
Our eyes do not mean anything no more and everything merges and everything is vain

Then the sun regains his good and proud place
Like he was at the first morning
I know that the seasons start
And him, the poor, the recovered, him I hear him whisper
Cry of joy my vivacious, my daffodil by that look that was calling me,
You know, you resuscitated me, my old canal flew out
The world becomes certain to me and me, I become tribune
And there is lightness in the air

Lovers flapping in the streets, the time won.

Serge Reggiani - Paris my rose

Original Title: "Paris ma rose"
Year: 1967

Pass the days and pass the weeks
Nor the time gone by nor the loves come back
Under the Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine.

Where has Paris my rose gone?
Paris over Seine the curly one?
Are gone taking the key away.
The nonchalants along the quays.
Paris my rose.

Where are they gone Villon and his girls?
Where is he gone Jenin the Void²
And the green path, what has become of it.
It that snaked near the Bastille?
Where is Paris the grey gone?
Paris over mist, the wet ?

It's gone Paris the forgotten.
Gone on tiptoe.
Paris the grey.

Where are they gone those who fraternize.
With the high walls and the graffitis?
Those suns of chalk where are they gone?
Which were making love to the walls of the churches?

Where is it gone Paris the red?
The commune of the barefeet
Got lost toward Aubervilliers
Or toward Nanterre, stuck in the mud.
Paris the red.

Where is he gone Clement of the cherries?
Is it closed the long pain.
Of the time when the guys had such a big heart
That one could only see him at the holes of the shirts?
Where is gone Paris I love?
Paris I love and which is no more.

²Jenin L'Avenu (character of poetry of Villon)

All songs by Reggiani.

Jacques Brel - The song of the old lovers

Original Title: "La chanson des vieux amants"
Year: 1967

Of course, there were storms
After twenty years of love, it's crazy love
A thousand times, you packed your bags
A thousand times, I took off
And every piece of furniture remembers,
In this bedroom without a cradle,
The screams of old tempests
Nothing resembled to anything no more
You had lost the taste for water
And me, the one of conquest

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

I, I know all your spells
You know all my bewitchments
You kept me from trap to trap
I have lost you time to time
Of course you took a few lovers
The time had well to be spent
The body well has to exult
But finally, finally
It required us quite a lot of talent
To be old without being adult

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

And more time makes a procession for us
And more time gives us torment
But isn't it the worst trap
To live in peace for lovers?
Of course you cry a bit less early
I tear myself up a bit later
We protect our mysteries less
We are less confident in luck
We are wary of the current
But it's still the tender war

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

Barbara - Because (I love you)

Original Title: "Parce que (je t'aime)"
Year: 1967

It's because your shoulder to my shoulder
Your mouth to my hair
And your hand on my neck,
It's because on my waist,
When your breath brushes against me
It's because your hands,
It's because cheek to cheek,
It's because in the morning,
It's because at night,
When you say "come", I come
You smile, I smile.
It's because here or there,
In another country,
As long as you are there,
It is always my country,
It's because I love you
That I prefer to go away.
It's better, much better, to leave one another
Before dies the time to love.

It's because I fear to see plunge into grief
the minutes, the hours, the seconds passed,
It's because I know that there needs an almost nothing
To undo one night and be lost in the morning.
I won't let leaning over our bed
Nor the shadow of a regret, nor the shadow of a boredom.
I won't let die with the passing days
What was you and me, what was our love.
It will never be carried away by time,
I carry it away myself. It will remain alive.

Oh leave me alone, yes I love you.
But I prefer to go away.
Because one has to be able to part
Before dies the time to love.

I have seen some, like us, who were going with slow steps
And carried their love like ones carries a child.
I have seen some, like us, who were going with slow steps
And fell on their knees, in the declining evening.
I found them back, furious and fighting
Like two wounded wolves. What are they now?

That, I do not want. I love you.
I do not want to tear ourselves up
It's better, believe me, to part
Before dies the time to love.
It's better, much better, to part
Before dies the time to love...

Jacques Brel - The tender hearts

Original Title: "Les coeurs tendres"
Year: 1967

Some have the heart so broad
That you come in without knocking
Some have the heart so broad
That you only see half of it

Some have the heart so frail
That you could break it with a finger
Some have the heart too frail
to live like you and me

They have plenty of flowers in the eyes
The eyes just above the fear
For fear of missing the time
That leads to Paris

Some have the heart so tender
That there lays the tits
Some have the heart too tender
Half men and half angels

Some have the heart so vast
That they are always on a trip
Some have the heart too vast
To do without mirages

They have plenty of flowers in the eyes
The eyes just above the fear
For fear of missing the time
That leads to Paris

Some have the heart outside
And can't do anything else but to offer it
The heart so much outside
That everyone makes use of it

That one has the heart outside
And so frail and so tender
That be damned the dead trees
that would not hear it

Has plenty of flowers in the eyes
The eyes just above the fear
For fear of missing the time
That leads to Paris

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - One day, one day

Original Title: "Un jour, un jour"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1967
Song about the execution of Federico García Lorca during the Spanish civil war.

Everything big and magnificent man has been,
His protest, his songs and his heroes,
Above that body and against his executioners,
In Granada, today, appears suddenly in front of the crime.

And that absent mouth and Lorca who went quiet
Filling suddenly the universe up with silence
Against the violent ones violence turns
God the roar that makes a murdered poet

One day, yet, one day will come orange colored
One day of palm, one day of foliages at the forehead
One day of bare shoulder where people will love one another
One day like a bird on the highest branch

Ah I despaired of my wild brothers
I saw, I saw the future on its knees
The triumphant Beast and the stone over us
And the fire of the soldiers brought upon our shores

What? Always it would be, through atrocious trade,
a neverending sharing that they make of the earth
Among those assassins feared by the panthers
And who made a dagger tremble when their hand touched it

One day, yet, one day will come orange colored
One day of palm, one day of foliages at the forehead
One day of bare shoulder where people will love one another
One day like a bird on the highest branch

What? It would always be the war, the quarrel,
Manners of Kings, and prostrated foreheads
And the woman's child uselessly born
Always the shredded weath of the grasshoppers

What? The penal colonies always and the flesh under the wheel
The slaughter always, justified by idols.
To the corpses thrown that coat of words.
The gag for the mouth and for the hand the nail.

One day, yet, one day will come orange colored
One day of palm, one day of foliages at the forehead
One day of bare shoulder where people will love one another
One day like a bird on the highest branch

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Jacques Bertin - A big lilac shawl

Original Title: "Un grand châle lilas"
Year: 1967

Firstly a big lilac shawl
coming from the back of my attic
for your frozen shoulders
And then a big acorn necklace
gathered along the paths
After the end of their season
After the end of our paths

And then a big wooden comb
At the time when the wind comes back to you
Your locks are crippled
A single ring at your hand
for which I'd have plunged
at the bottom of the well of an old convent
and you'll give me your hand

And old understanding horse
A stable of my outline
And in front of me you climbed
A path forgotten by men
A way along the orchards
A slightly wrinkled pippin
to bite along the paths

A small boat on a canal
A child along the towpath
In an old-fashionned blouse
And then the straw of gross of the pond
And then the reflections of the pond
At the time when the cold is coming back in
And when we are going to swim

We'll go through the cold
of a past season
Where everything will be rebirth
dressed in old clothes
of old moments of a past
Like the fire is revived from the embers
Like the frostdrop flower