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

Léo Ferré - It's great

Original title: "C'est extra"
Year: 1969

A leather dress like a spindle
That would be hot unintentionally
And inside, like a sailor
A girl who sways an english tune
It's great
The Moody Blues singing the night
Like some satin of a married's white
And in the harbor of this night
A girl who sways and comes to berth*

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

Some hair falling like the evening
And some music at the bottom of the loins
That jazz jazzing in the dark
And that ache that feels good
It's great
Those hands playing some rainbow
On the guitar of life
And then those shouts raising to the sky
Like a shining cigarette

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

Some stockings holding high up
Like the strings of a violin
And that flesh troubled by
The bow that runs my song
It's great
And under the barely closed veil
That tuft of black jésus
Streaming down in its craddle
Like a swimmer noone expects anymore

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

A leather dress like an oversight
That would be hot unintentionally
And inside, like a grey morning,
A girl swaying and keeping quiet
It's great
The Moody Blues who do not care
That amp not meaning anything no more
And in the music of the silence
A girl who sways and comes dying

It's great
It's great
It's great
It's great

*: To berth in French uses the same verb as to wet, originates from wetting the anchor used in a different context here.

Charles Aznavour - From now on

Original Title: "Désormais"
Year: 1969

From now on, we won't be seen together anymore
From now on, my heart will live under the rubbles
Of this world which looks like us
And which has been devastated by time

From now on, my voice won't say "I love you" anymore
From now on, I who wanted to become your shadow
I'll be the shadow of my own self
My hand separated from your hand

Never more, will we bite the same fruit
Will we sleep in the same bed
Will we do the same gestures
Never more, will we know the same fear
To see our happiness flee
And incidentally...From now on.

From now on, people will see us one without the other
From now on, we will change our habits
And those words I believed ours
You will tell them between other arms

From now on, I will keep my door closed
From now on, locked in my loneliness
I'll hang out among things
Which will still be talking about you

Never more, will we bite the same fruit
Will we sleep in the same bed
Will we do the same gestures
Never more, will we know the same fear
To see our happiness flee
And incidentally...From now on.

We won't be seen together anymore
We won't be seen together anymore

Live version:

Georges Brassens - Misogyny aside

Original Title: "Misogynie à part"
Year: 1969

Misogyny aside, the wise man was right
There are the annoying ones, you can find plenty of them
They are pressing in a crowd.
There are the damned nuissances, a bit more refined
And then clearly the pick of the bunch
There are the buggeresses.

Mine, alone, bids higher over them all
She comes under the three categories at the same time
Genuine prodigy
Annoying, nuisance and buggeress as well
She passes, she goes past, she surpasses everything
She pisses me off, I'm telling you

My God, forgive me for those quite bitter words
She pisses me off, she pisses me off, she pisses me off,
She abuses, she oversteps the mark
She gets on my nerves and I regret my pretty loves with
The little children of Mary the bishop whispered to me
She pisses me off, I'm telling you

She pisses me off, she pisses me off,
And forces me to clean my nails before to confirm her ass
And yet, it's not callipygian
And charity only pushes my resigned hand
Toward that ass, killjoy, conical, sullen
She pisses me off, I'm telling you

She pisses me off, she pisses me off, I repeat it and when
She pats my belly, she keeps her gloves
And that offends me
Aside that it denotes of a serious lack of tact
It does not favour contact that much
She pisses me off, I'm telling you

She pisses me off, she pisses me off, when I fall on my knees
For some kind of devotions which are typically local
And which gives vertigo
Thinking it is time to sing the Creed
She opens wide her missal on my back
She gets on my nerves, I tell you

She pisses me off, she pisses me off, even during fornication
She gets bored stiff, she gets bored stiff with ostentation
She gets bored stiff, I tell you
Instead of shouting: "More! Come on! Come on!"
She declaims some Claudel, some Claudel that's what I said
Well then it freezes me!

She pisses me off, she pisses me off, I admit that that Claudel
is a man of genius, an immortal poet,
I recognise his prestige
But that one gets from his pious work
An aphrodisiac, no, that's clear utopia.
She pisses me off, I'm telling you
She pisses me off, I'm telling you

Live version:

Another Live (ina.fr)

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - The poets

Original Title: "Les poètes"
Text: Louis Aragon

Year: 1969

I do not know what possesses me
And pushes me to say out loud,
Nor for the pity nor for the help
Nor like one would confess one's faults,
What inhabits me and what obsesses me
What inhabits me and what obsesses me

The one who sings tortures himself
Which shouts in me, which animal
I kill or which creature,
In the name of good in the name of evil,
Only know those who remained silent.
Only know those who remained silent.

Machado sleeps in Collioure
Three steps were enough out of Spain
For the sky for him to become heavy
He sat in this countryside
And closed his eyes for ever
And closed his eyes for ever

Above the waters and the plains
Above the roofs of the hills
A plainchant rises at the top of the voice²
Is it toward the star Hölderlin?
Is it toward the star Verlaine?
Is it toward the star Verlaine?

Marlowe you need the tavern
Not for Faust but to die there
Between the killers surrounding you
with their daggers and their laughs
By the glimmer of a lantern.
By the glimmer of a lantern.

Stars, dusts of flames,
In august which fall on the ground
All the sky, this night, proclaims
The slaughter of the nightingales
But what does the universe know of the tragedy.
But what does the universe know of the tragedy.

The suffering gives birth to the dreams
Like a hive its bees
The man shouts where his iron gnaws him
And his wound fathers a sun
More beautiful than the ancient lies.
More beautiful than the ancient lies.

I do not know what possesses me
And pushes me to say out loud,
Nor for the pity nor for the help
Nor like one would confess one's faults,
What inhabits me and what obsesses me
What inhabits me and what obsesses me

²at full throat
All poems written by Louis Aragon

Catherine Le Forestier - The red bedroom

Original Title: "La Chambre Rouge"
Year: 1969

I remember that the bedroom was red
Like a mouth, like a sun
And that you were the first one, mister the thief
Velvet Mister, Mister my love
And that you were the first one, mister the stranger
Do you remember?

Pass the days, my loves grow weary of them
Pass the nights, my loves are bored
without you

I remember that the bedroom was red
The lamp sweet, the bed deep
And that you were the first one to have carried me
At the hollow of your hands
At the edge of the morning
And that you were the first one, mister the stranger
Do you remember?

Pass the days, my loves grow weary of them
Pass the nights, my loves are bored
without you

I remember that the bedroom was red
The lamp turned off, the bed stripped
And that the door closed, I didn't know the words that had to be said
And that the door closed, if I cried from it
I can well laugh of it

Pass the days, my loves grow weary of them
Pass the nights, my loves are bored
without you

Georges Brassens - The passing birds

Original Title: "Les oiseaux de passage"
Text: poem by Jean Richepin adapted by G. Brassens
Year: 1969

Oh happy life of the bourgeois
Be it that april buds
Or december freezes,
They are proud and happy.

That pigeon* is loved,
Three days by his hen-pigeon
It's enough for him, he knows
that love doesn't last

This turkey has always
blessed his destiny
and when time comes
to die, one must see

This young goose in tears
"It's here I am born
I die near my mother
And I did my duty".

She has done her duty
This means that never
did she have impossible
wishes. That she had

No dreams of moon
No desire of junk
carrying her without rower
On an unknown river.

And all are made so
Live the same life
Always for those people
This is not hideous.

That duck only has one beak
And never felt the desire
Or to have none anymore
Or to have two.

They have no need
of kisses on their lips
And far away from the vain dreams
Far away from bitter worries

Own for only heart
An organ without fever
A regular cuckoo clock
And guaranteed for ten years.

Oh the perfectly happy people.
Suddenly in space
So high that they seem to go
Slowly in great flight

In the shape of a triangle
Arrive glide and pass
Where are they going?...who are they?
How far away from the ground they are

Look at them pass, them
those are the savages
They go where their desire
Wants above mountains

And woods, and seas, and winds
And far from slaveries
The air they drink
Would make your lungs burst

Look at them, before
reaching for their wild dreams
More than one, the wing broken
And blood full their eyes,

Will die. Those poor people
Also have woman and mother
And know to love them
As well as you, better.

To cherish this woman
And feed this mother
They could become
Poultry like you

But they are first of all
Sons of the chimera
Azure thirsty ones
Poets and crazies.

Look at the old cocks
Young edifying goose
Nothing of you will be able to
Climb as high as them

And the little that will come
from them to you
It's their droppings
The bourgeois are troubled
To see the beggars pass

Look at them, old cocks,
Young edifying goose
Nothing of you will be able to
Climb as high as them

And the only thing that will come
from them to you
It's their droppings
The bourgeois are troubled
To see the beggars pass

*mug/stupid person

Jean Ferrat - My France

Original Title: "Ma France"
Year: 1969

From plains to forests, from small valleys to hills
From spring yet to be born to your dead seasons
From what I have seen to what I imagine
I'll never finish writing your song,
My France

To the big summer sun that bends the Provence
from the Britany's brooms to the Ardèche's heathers
Something in the air has that transparency
and that taste of happiness that makes my lip dry
My France

That tune of freedom beyond the borders
to the foreign people that gave vertigo
and from which you usurp the prestige today
She still answers to the name of Robespierre
My France

The one of the old Hugo holding from his exile
five year old children working in the mines
The one who built with her own hands your factories
The one whom Mr Tiers has said "Let's shoot her"
My France

Picasso holds the world at the end of his palette
from the lips of Eluard doves are taking off
They do not stop your artists prophets
to say that it's time that the adversity succumbs
My France

Their voices increase to only make one
The one that always pays for your crimes, your mistakes
by filling History and its communal graves
That I sing for ever the one of the workers
My France

The one that only owns in gold her white nights
For the stubbon fight of that daily time
From the newspaper that is sold the morning of a sunday
To the poster you paste at the wall of the following day
My France

Whether she comes up from the mines, goes down from the hills
The one that sings in me the beautiful, the rebellious
She holds the future tight in her slender hands
The one of thirty six to sixty eight stars
My France