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
You can sleep without anguish
He is going away and it's for tomorrow
An angel died, an angel passes
He is fed up with your mornings
The youngest of the family
The most tender, the most distant
The one who pleased to your daughter
The one who risks it all
The good for nothing
It does not matter how we travel
Boat, plane, pavot flower
To leave is always an illusion
Maybe but it is so beautiful
You didn't like this young man
With hair too short or too long
Thief of hearts, thief of apples
He is going away. What a blessing
But he is going to pick up stars
Which will florish your skies of beds
To you who stay in the hold
And do not dare to pay the price
It does not matter how we travel
Boat, plane, pavot flower
To leave is always an illusion
Maybe but it is so beautiful
Undoubtly, luck and glory
Will sow flowers under his steps
Unless that, from dreams to unfortunate events
He gets lost, he drowns himself
Whether he is in the bed of a queen
Whether he makes a last circle in the water
Whether he wins or loses his sorrow
His destiny is one of the most beautiful
The end of the journey does not matter
The name of the hero does not matter
The one who carries mirages
Is a flower to your hats
Is a flower to your hats
Van Gogh's chair where you do not sit
Vincent's shoes which you do not put on
The ear of that guy who does not listen to you anymore
Those crows in the wheat of a lost canvas
I do not stop anymore when I see madness
I run her errands and sleep in her bed
The tears of that tree worried in the forest
What kind of wood was Vincent's chair?
The sheeps of the street hide in scarves
Workers change tune without stopping work
I do not stop anymore when I see madness
I run her errands and sleep in her bed
The steps of that child in the hell of the Faculty
Her sex and her virtue, her pill and her stage fright
When vertigo penetrates and overtakes her
Under the double and iced eye of an old prostitute's mirror
It's at that moment that I lose madness
And that I stay alone with my madman's eyes
Original Title: "Rives défendues"
Text: Pierre Seghers
Year: 1970
Along the forbidden shores
Along the astounded loves
Along the time I've lost
You, You my elusive love
Nothing more than a trace in the sand
Never seen, never heard
I took solitary paths
Which turned around the earth
There, I've learned to keep quiet for a long time
You, you were shouting in my chest
A lost shout of wildfowl
Where my mysteries were tearing one another apart
I've held secret like a fire
Love which is written with chalk
On the walls and in the forests
You, You were pursuing me endlessly
Like my shadow, like my distress
Like a reflection on the marsh
Over me, sometimes, you leaned
In your gaze a swath
Of tears, of exchanged tears
You, you were seeing me like a cloud
Vanishing in the bottom of the beaches
Annihilating myself in my dive
So leaving one another
We were going beyond time
To die where the wind is waiting for us
You, you were soon nothing more than a gesture
Than a mirage or what's left of it
And yet, I'll be waiting for you for a long time.
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1970
This poem is about a catalan Sardane, Santa Espina (Holy Thorn), which had been outlawed by the dictatures of Rivera and Franco.
I remember a tune that could not be heard without the heart beating
And the blood being on fire
Without the fire starting again like an heart under the ash
And we finally knew why the sky is blue
I remember a tune alike to the air from the open sea
A tune alike to the shout of the migrating birds
A tune of which the sob seems to carry in the margin
The revenge of the seas on their tamers
I remember a tune which we whistled in the shadow
During the times without sun, nor errant knights
When childhood was crying and in the catacombs
A pure people was dreaming of the death of tyrants
He was carrying in its name the holy thorns
Which gives, at the forehead of a god, his colored tears
And the song in the flesh, like an anchored smallboat
Revived his wound and reopened his pain
Noone would have dared to put words
On this tune humming all the forbidden words
The universe ravaged with ancient poxes
It was your hope and your four thursdays
I search in vain its heartbreaking sentences
But the earth only has tears of Opera left
At the memory of those murmuring waters is missing
The call from spring to spring of the tenoras
Oh Holy Thron Oh Holy Thorn resume
We were listening to you standing up in time past, remember
Who could restore your romance nowadays
Give back the voice to the singing woods which went quiet
I want to believe that there are musics still
In the mysterious heart of the country there
The mute will talk again and the paralytics
Will walk a fine day at the sound of the cobla
And we'll see fall from the forehead of the Son of Man
The crown of blood symbol of misfortune
And Man will sing loudly this time as
If life was beautiful and hawthorn in blossom
Original Title: "La mémoire et la mer"
Year: 1970, 1994 (Léotard's version)
The tide, I have it in the heart
Which comes in me again like a sign
I die of my little sister
Of my child and of my swan
A boat it depends on how
It is secured to the harbor, barely.
Some lightyears are crying down
from my firmament and I leave some behind
I'm the ghost of Jersey
the one that comes the evenings of show
Throwing at you the mist as kisses
And picking you up in his rhymes
Like the trammel of July
Where the lone wolf was glinting
The one I was seeing shine
At the fingers of sand of the earth
Remember that sea dog
That we were setting free on parole
And who barks like mad in the desert
Of wracks from some necropolis.
I'm sure that life is there
With its flannel lungs
When it cries of those weathers
The cold, all grey, which is calling us
I remember evenings over there
And sprints won over the foam
That slobber of the short-haired horses
At the level of the rocks which are wasting away
Oh the angel of lost pleasures
Oh rumor of an other habit
My desires from then on are nothing more
but a sorrow of my loneliness
And the devil of the conquered evenings
With his palenesses of rescue
And the shark of the paradises
In the environment wet with mosses
Come back green girl of the Fjords
Come back fiddle of the violin bands
In the harbor, the horns are clamoring
For the return of the comrades
Oh rare perfume of the salants
In the pepper fire of the chappings
When I was going while geometric-ing
My soul at the hollow of your wound
In the disorder of your ass
Nabbed in the sheets made of thin dawn
I was seeing one more stained glass window.
And you green girl, my spleen.
The sea shells acting a minor part
Under the broken liquid sunlights
Playing so much castanets
That it looked like Spain, livid
God of the granites have mercy
Of their vocation of finery
When the knife comes to interfere in
Their castanet figure
And I was seeing what one has a foreboding of
When we have a premonition of the glimpse
Between the shutters of the blood
And that the corpuscules represent
A blue mathematic
In that sea which is never slack
From which comes in again little by little towards me
That memory of the stars
That rumor coming from there
Under the friendly arc where I blind myself
Those hands which show off to me
Those ruminatning hands that moo
That rumor follows me for a long time
Like a beggar under the anathema
Like the shadow which loses its time
Drawing my theorem
And on my red make-up
Comes beating like a door
That rumor which goes standing
In the street filled with dead musics
It's over the sea, it's over
On the beach, the sand bleats
Like sheeps of infinite
When the shepherdess sea is calling me
The sea and the birds flew from sleep
The thresold stone worn out by the steps of the seasons
Roses of foam and bright red fruits
The wind dreaming over my house
The watching fire
The fishes' gold
The sun
The harvests
Everything I love
Everything I love in the hollow of the hands
Fights of yesterday, fights always started over
First shout of life, seeds of the future
One step further towards beauty
Real dreams going to blossom
The won hope
Being able to unite
Goodness
To rebuild
Everything I love
Everything I love leads to tomorrow
The taste of living finally without moderation, without borders
The reasons of love, the reasons of life
Two arms like a big open book
A song against oblivion
Rightful angers
Conquered mysteries
The light
The infinity
Everything I love
Everything I love belongs to you
Original Title: "Les lilas"
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1970
I dream and I wake up
in a scent of lilac
On which side of sleep
Have I let you here or there
I was sleeping in your memory
And you were forgetting me in a whisper
Or it was the other way around, just because
Was I where you weren't?
I fall back asleep to reach for you
In the country you dreamt about
Nothing there does anything else but to flee and feign
You, you had left it already
In life or in dream
Everything has that peculiar sparkle
Of the perfume which persists
And of a song which flew off
Oh clear night, dark day
My absent one in between my arms
And nothing else in me last
But what you whispered
Original Title: "Heureux qui comme Ulysse"
Music from the movie with Fernandel.
The first sentence comes from a sonnet by Joachim Du Bellay
Year: 1970
Happy the one who, like Ulysses,
Has made a beautiful trip
Happy the one who, like Ulysses,
Has seen hundred landscapes
And then has found back
After many crossings
The country of the green years
By a little summer morning
When the sun is singing in your heart
How beautiful freedom is
Freedom
When we are feeling better here than elsewhere
When a friend makes happiness
How beautiful freedom is
Freedom
With the sun and the wind
With the rain and the fine weather
We were living happily
My horse, my Provence and I
My horse, my Provence and I
Happy the one who, like Ulysses,
Has made a beautiful trip
Happy the one who, like Ulysses,
Has seen hundred landscapes
And then has found back
After many crossings
The country of the green years
By a little summer morning
When the sun is singing in your heart
How beautiful freedom is
Freedom
When hardships are over
When a friend dries up your tears
How beautiful freedom is
Freedom
Lashed by the sun and wind
Lost in the middle of the ponds
We will live happily
My horse, my Provence and I
My horse, my Provence and I
My beautiful solemn love
My beautiful play love
My beautiful well-behaved love
As you want it.
My beautiful flame love.
My beautiful fire love.
My beautiful woman love
My beautiful God love
My beautiful love of hurt of living
Between my hands only surprised
To be at the moment where you surrender
Like those pages of those books
That we never finish cutting.
My beautiful feast love
My beautiful mourning love
My beautiful great love
Lionness and roe deer.
My beautiful dream love.
My beautiful watch love.
Your love gnaws at me
Like it fills me with wonder
My beautiful love of dark flamev
The moment after destroyed
Just at your eyelid that shadow
and here I am figure without number
And like a stone without the fruit.
My beautiful mauve love
My beautiful blue love
My beautiful fawn love
As much as you want it.
My beautiful drama love
My beautiful play love
My beautiful woman love
My beautiful God love.
Original Title: "Je voudrais une fête étrange et très calme"
Year: 1970
I'd like a strange and very calm party
with musicians, silent and sweet
It'd be during an evening of fall, a sunday
A very slow merry-go-round, a fine music
Naked women sitting on the white stone
are bending down to tie the shoe laces of children
Children in ribbons and who are pulling on white kites
Some women are humming a little, their head tilts
I would want eternal falls of leaves
Love in a sob, a light smile
Like we do between our fingers glide blades of grass
Women quietly distraught, lying down.
Streamer sailing like prayers
A danse in the grass and the grey sky very low
slowly, and the white and the red and the grey and the green
and threads of the Virgin are hanging on our arms
And to die at the knees of a very soft woman
Swings come and go, calls
Slowly on her heavy belly lay my head
And talk solemnly of the bodies, the day is going away
Laces, tulles, in the grass, a breeze
In the bodices hedges, nylons hang
Hair swinging softly, you see grey necks
and the arms send back, vaguely heavy balloons.
Original Title: "Les anglais bombardaient les ponts"
Year: 1970
The English were bombing the bridges
It was my father's wedding
The dance, the shouts, the wine harvests it was the war
The wedding night, on foot, exhausted very late
at the house of priest's aunt
My father who never went
to overturn girls in the vines
who looks at my mom and all the time that has passed
The straw that goes away in the Loire's current
To the bridges of Cé²
My father prepares plans
My mother claims he is mad
about an house even closer to the sun
"Your mother would be fine there on her knitting
In a garden very beautiful very sweet"
"But I do not like knitting"
My mother talks about the children
She says words about love and time
Like a cracked glass and who smiles
and living, it lasts a long time
And the father do you think to your son
with whom you talk of women
Your sister she'd better take a lover
God will forgive her the flower in the eye
We should not tell mother anything
Comon, the good lord's church is too small now
too many silences in mother's boxes
all-night vigils we'll make in two go the next moving out
It'll be a morning of fall
And rain on the yards
I'll be somewhere toward Bordeaux on a train
With strangers I talk and I'll not be home tomorrow
You are in your car, you think,
you father is alone at the rendez-vous.
The daylight is pale suddenly
Of your life you are ashame, a phone call
and it's not a lot
Your father is very far from his way
He walks alone and he is being talked to
He thinks about pictures where his son was there
The son, he says that he doesn't believe in god
but mother's face...
And the father so says to the good lord,
for once I agree
and if it's from you if he comes I'll not say anything
let him give me discreetly a few recent news from mother
It's a winter night very late
It's raining outside, the hotel is empty
The night manager has a very sweet smile
He says "my mother lends him her shawl"
And "What room do you want?"
Louvigné-du-désert: Let's stop, we will drink
in a small café open to the first colds of my memory
To the vanished friends, already lost among the shadows
To those I loved so much I believe and I forgot
I'd invite a few poets to make a nice funeral
A few octosyllables and I'm alone to drink to the event
We would tell eachother while talking a bit slowly the story
of the time going away, of oblivion that makes the music in front of us
And then we would content ourselves with a few things, a little wine
a word that grazes the grass of the sun and it's in vain
I only have poets as friends and I'll go back home by the pathways
like an extinguished cigarette, relit and that is going off
Original Title: "A la pointe nue de l'averse"
Year: 1970
At the naked point of the downpour
There is my love
She is more beautiful than the downpour
And than the water on earth
Comes the wind naked on his horse
And he finds her beautiful
The wind throws her his net
He bends down and talks to her
The wind takes her away in his night
He wants her for his wife
Of all the whiteness of the nights
My love is whiter
The wind lays her in the morning
Between the grey and the grass
Ahead of the morning, standing up,
My love is more beautiful.
More beautiful with grass and water spattered
The night in her gaze
The wind is going away. For my love
The suns are going to fight.
Original Title: "La Lampe du Tableau de Bord"
Year: 1970
The dashboard light it's my north star I'm going far away
Next to me, you are sleeping or I'm alone or you are speaking to me but so far
I do not know anything anymore but the Gauloises with the matches and the silence
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
All the girls I loved, all the lost friends, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.
I speed in the dark with time to time the call of lights, the friends.
My love, the night glides, there is noone on the road anymore but the rain.
I've forgotten the map, I never remember the rules of the game but it doesn't matter.
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
The cry of the widows motionless at the corner of their house, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.
A mad woman ran toward me the arms very white, a dog's face
And I've seen big children's despairs that came drinking in my hands
The hunted women in the alcoves keep quiet and worry
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
In the lights, I've nailed the call of an unknown christ, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.
A morning, we'll arrive, wake up, in a frozen pub, a deserted village
There are sobs, dreams abandonned on the meadows, people's life.
Children going to school and the tied up scarf of friendships that flies away.
I do not know if it's the day or the sky or life
I do not know, it's bright and I am going to sleep
I have nothing left but my love all tired all sad
And something but so little a red hare that ran in the lights.
Original title: "Je parle pour celui qui a manqué le train"
Year: 1970
I talk for the one who missed the train
and who stays alone on the platform, he doesn't care
Toulouse, eternity, sixty years of train
What's that ticket that has been put in my hand?
I talk for the one who missed the train
He would feel annoyed with himself to embark on that trip
and of living he does not care. His life is going away from him
In the cars of the joy of living of the first classes and he doesn't care
This train smells of sweat, the women laughing
The shouts of children, the shaved mug of the officers
The haughty stare of the made pregnant women
The causes, the flags, the cheap, the revolt
It's a very grey morning, very beautiful of a province
You go in the silence of the stalls and of the balconies
You walk in the street, you don't care, you make fun
of yourself, of everything, of nothing, of your life that is going away.
It'd be nice to leave alone for a trip
The dreamt life, the death trembling from perfumes
And in the paradise without noises, like a childhood
where the women's underwear are going, it seems.
