Léo Ferré - The loneliness

Original Title: "La solitude"
Year: 1971

I'm from a different country than yours, from another neighborhood, from another loneliness.
Today I invent myself some side roads.
I’m no longer local, I’m waiting for some mutants.
Biologically I’m working out with the idea
I made myself of Biology: I piss, I ejaculate, I cry.
It’s of highest urgency for us to shape our ideas
as if they were manufactured objects.
I am ready to provide you with the molds. But...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

The molds are made of a new texture, I'm warning you.
They were cast tomorrow morning.
If you haven’t from this very day the relative sentiment of your duration
It is futile to pass on to you, it's useless to look in front of you
Because the front is behind, night is day, and...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

It’s of utmost urgency for our laundromats,
At street corners, to be as imperturbable as the stop lights or free way indicators
The cops of the detersive will show you the box
Where you'll be at liberty to wash what you believe to be your conscience
And which is nothing more but an dependency of the neurophilic computer
That is serving you as brain. And yet..
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

Despair is a superior form of the critique.
For the moment, we’ll call it: “happiness”
The words which you are using no longer being “the words”
But some sort of canal through which
The illiterate people are easing their conscience. But...
The loneliness...
The loneliness...

We will talk about the civil code later
For the moment, I would like to codify the uncodifiable.
I would like to measure your monarch butterfly democracies.
I would like to insert myself into the absolute void and become the unspoken,
The never happened, the non-virgin by lack of lucidity.
Lucidity is located in my pants!
In my pants!

Serge Reggiani - How long it is to die, my youth

Original Title: "Comme elle est longue à mourir ma jeunesse"
Text: Jean Dréjac
Music: Michel Legrand
Year: 1971

How long it is to die, my youth
My youth in my heart
Have I never betrayed it, my youth
Who leaves me to my agitation
And who goes away from me
How long it is to die, this rose
This rose of life
The most beautiful of the garden of extravagances
One rose,
The last one of the garden we forget.

How heavy they are to carry in the fall
In the fall of life
Those dreams who will sink without anyone
Without anyone to care for them
We have to resign ourselves
But I am looking at one rose blossoming
One rose of the Spring
And I suddenly find something back
Under my hand
Yes, I am hearing the wandering heart
Of a young man
A young man
Who does not want to die

Claude Vinci - Eluard - The lover

Original title: "L'amoureuse"
Text: Paul Eluard
Music: Jean-Pierre Martin
Year: 1971

She is standing over my eyelids
And her hair are in mine
She has the shape of my hands
She has the color of my eyes
She engulfs herself in my shadow
Like a stone over the sky
Like a stone over the sky

She engulfs herself in my shadow
Like a stone over the sky
Her eyes are always opened
And she will not let me sleep
Her dreams in broad light
Are making the suns evaporate
Are making the suns evaporate

Her dreams in broad light
Are making the suns evaporate
Are making me laugh, cry and laugh
Talk without having anything to say.
Are making me laugh, cry and laugh
Talk without having anything to say.

Léo Ferré - Your style

Original Title: "Ton style"
Year: 1971

All those shouts from the street, those men, those shops
Where I see you in the alleys like an offense
To the three pences jewelry, to the lingeries of nothing
Those shadows in the eyes of the women when you pass
All those noises all those chants and those passing perfumes
When you place yourself in it or when I exile you there
To love you from further away like that in passing
All those slightly crazy stuffs, all that is your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is my law when you bend to it, slut!
It's my blood to your wound, it's your fire to my cigarettes
It's love on the knees that never ends
Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass

All those harbors of the night, that kid that we'd like to have
And then we don't want him anymore as soon as you beckon me
At the corner of a saying sticked in your wellness
By the blood of my set² and the wine of your vine
All this blending in memories of us
In those lost worlds of the year eighty thousand
When we'll not be there anymore and when we'll be reborn
All those slightly crazy stuffs, all that is your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is your right when I'm allowed to your style
It's that hellish game of head and then of tails
It's love that keeps quiet when you do not sing anymore
Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass

Wanting so much to know, one does not know anything no more
What I like about you it's what I imagine
At the tip of a gesture, at the rescue of my hand
At your mouth invented beyond indignity
In those streets of the night with my masked eyes
When you only recognizes a specific style of me
When I make of myself another one, imagined
All those careless things all that it's your style

Your style is your ass, it's your ass, it's your ass
Your style is your law when I bend to it, slut!
It's your wound, it's my blood, it's my ash at your cigarettes
When the night has thrown its fires and is dieing
Your style is your heart, it's your heart, it's your heart

²slang designating men's three pieces, usually used to ask to be left alone

Jacques Douai - Let me live

Original Title: "Laisse-moi vivre"
Text: Pierre Seghers
Year: 1971

Where do you come back from, Love,
Where do you come back from?
I was following the time which is running
Faster than us
Faster than us

What a pearly skin, Love,
What a pearly skin!
I polished myself the whole day
At the edge of a sword
At the edge of a sword.

Made you so cold, Love,
Made you so cold.
Now my fingers are numb,
And the rest as well
And the rest as well

But in your beautiful eyes, Love,
But in your beautiful eyes
I know that shines always,
The flame of the fire,
The flame of the fire.

The fire soaks the swords
The fire has the smell of fire.
Forget it
I was wrong
I come straight back from the skies.

Where do you come back from, Love,
Where do you come back from?
I was following the time which is running
Faster than us
Faster than us

Léo Ferré - You never say anything

Original Title: "Tu ne dis jamais rien"
Year: 1971

I see the world a bit like one sees the unbelievable
This what the unbelievable is, it's what we are not seeing
Flowers inside pencils, Debussy on the sand
In Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer which I do not know
The girls in iron at the bottom of the habits
And miners digging in their all warm bellies
Some bras with cats, some bosses in the South
Busy working hard for the workmen from Renault
Me, I thus live elsewhere in dimension four
With the comic book "At mc²"
I am Tomorrow, I am the Oak and I am the hearth
Come over to my place, my love, come to my place there is some fire
I'm flying for the skin on the rest area of the miseries
I am an old Boeing of the year eighty nine
I leave the flower at my teeth for the last war
My typewriter has a whole new suit
I see the stereo in the eye of a petite girl
Some pianos on some girl's bellies in Paris
A frozen chimpanzee singing my music
softly along with me, and you, you did not say anything

You never say anything, you never say anything
Sometimes you cry, like beasts cry
Without knowing why and who do not say a word
Like you, the eye elsewhere, celebrating me.

In your barren belly, I see some multitudes
I am Tomorrow. It's You the tomorrow of my life
I see some lost fiancees who are getting undressed
to the velvet of your voice that goes over the night
I see some tepid smells on cobbles out of a dream
In Paris when I am lying down in her bed
To see passing over me some girls and some sponges
Who sob of the sap of the age of foly
Me, I live thus elsewhere in the X dimension
With the comic book at a friend's home
I am Never I am Always I am the X
Of the love formula and of the boredom one
I see some blue tramways on some rails of sad children
Some chinese folding screens in front of the North wind
Some objects without purpose, some artist's windows
From which come out the sun, genius and death
Wait, I see very close an orphan star
Which comes inside your house to talk to you about me
I know her for a long while, she is my neighbor
But its light is illusory, like I am

And you do not say anything to me. You never say anything
But you shine in my heart like this star shines
With its lost fires in some far away paths
You never say anything like stars do.

You never say anything
You never say anything
You never say anything
You never say anything

Jean Ferrat - To understand

Original Title: "Comprendre"
Year: 1971

I'll teach you the water, the light
The tree, the spring, the torrent
The secret of the vines, of the stones
The noise of the wind

You, you'll teach me the panther
The cat, the fox and the bird
The wounded shout of the lonely one
Far from the herd
We will learn to see things
And their why and their how
I'd have the innocense of the roses
And you the one of the children

To understand
The flower and the fruit
To understand
The world of today

You'll teach me your eyes of flowers,
Your necklaces arms, your flame hips
Your bee dream, and heartbreak,
Your womanly laugh
I'd be the shadow which follows you
That part always in ourselves
Which slips away from the other and runs away from
What we love
We will learn to know each others
By toppling down the bans
I'll be the open window
And you the night

To understand
The flower and the fruit
To understand
What unites us

We will conjugate the future
At every moment present inside of you
By sharing the wine, the laugh
With those ones
Who live higher than their dreams
Who hate solitude
Who hunt the shadow and the lie
Of the habits
We will learn to see the world
With those men of today
Whose dreams merge with ours
Towards infinity

To understand
The flower and the fruit
To understand
The man of today

Charles Aznavour - To die of loving

Original Title: "Mourir d'aimer"
Year: 1971

The walls of my life are smooth
I hang onto them but I slide
Slowly toward my fate
To die of loving

While the world is judging me
I can only see one shelter for me
Any exit being locked up to me
To die of loving

To die of loving
Willingly sinking into the night
Pay love at the cost of one's life
Sin against the body but not against the mind

Let's leave the world to its problems
Hateful people to face themselves
With their narrow ideas
To die of loving

As our love can't live
Better then to close its book
And rather than burn it
To die of loving

To leave while lifting your head up
Coming out victorious from a defeat
Reversing all the data
To die of loving

To die of loving
As we can of anything
Abandon everything behind us
To only take away what was us, what was you

You are the spring, I the fall
Your heart is taken away, mine is given
And my road already marked out
To die of loving
To die of loving
To die of loving

Live on tv:

Jean Ferrat - Louis Aragon - Robert the devil

Original Title: "Robert le diable"
Year: 1971
Song written by Louis Aragon in memory of Robert Desnos

You were carrying in your voice something of a song of Nerval
When you were speaking of blood, peculiar young man
Giving emphasis to cruelty with your regular verses
The butchers' laugh were escorting you in the markets
You had in those days those accent of impossible
which I hear reverberate through the years
Twenty year old poet assassinated in advance
And that were already avenged by the blasphemy and the insult

I think of you Desnos who left from Compiègne
Like one evening while sleeping you told us the story of it
To fulfil to the end your own prophecy
Over there where the destiny of our century bleeds

Standing under a porch with a cornet of fries
Here you are under bad weather near Saint-Merry
Staring at the world with insolence
Of your look alike to the one of Amphitrite
Enormous and quivering of a pale steam
And the ground at your foot alike to the foam at the bare breast
Covers itself with cigarette butts, with spits, with vegetables
In the steps of the rain and of the prostitutes

I think of you Desnos who left from Compiègne
Like one evening while sleeping you told us the story of it
To fulfil to the end your own prophecy
Over there where the destiny of our century bleeds

And it's you again who endlessly goes out for a stroll
Shepherd of the long desires and of the broken dreams
Under the dark trees in the Champs-Elysées
Until the exhaustion of the night, your domain
Oh the East Station* and the first croissant
The black coffee that one takes next to the coffee machine
The fresh newspapers the boulevards full of scents
The mouths of the metro which catches the passers-by

I think of you Desnos who left from Compiègne
Like one evening while sleeping you told us the story of it
To fulfil to the end your own prophecy
Over there where the destiny of our century bleeds

The city, a bit everywhere, keeps of your presence²
A shadow of colour to her dirty pediments
And when the day rises at the dim Sacré-Coeur
When on the Panthéon like a squaring off dusk puts its grazed scraps
When the wind screams wolf under the Pont-au-Change
When the sun in the Wood runs with the oranges
When the moon sits from church tower to church tower

I think of you Desnos who left from Compiègne
Like one evening while sleeping you told us the story of it
To fulfil to the end your own prophecy
Over there where the destiny of our century bleeds

*Gare de l'Est
²literally "coming through"/way

Christine Sèvres' version


All poems written by Louis Aragon

Catherine Le Forestier - In the country of your body

Original Title: "Au pays de ton corps"
Year: 1971

La la la...

I know a country, it looks like a garden
I can live there naked without ever being cold
When I close the eyes, I find there under my fingers
All the paths
I have the bottom of your eyes to look for gold
The colour of your skin to read the seasons
The hollow of your shoulder as horizon line
And all around me your arms are making the decor
At the country of your body
At the country of your body
At the country of your body

La la la...

I have seen marvels there and biggest mysteries
Than summer in december or snow in may
It seems to me that more I know it
more I get lost into it
And if it measures barely one meter eighty
I make there a longer way with a single kiss
Than do, in the sky, men and their rockets
It's a country where one travels with the hands
The country of your body
The country of your body
The country of your body

La la la...

I know a country, it looks like a garden
I can live there naked without ever being cold
When I close the eyes, I find there under my fingers
All the paths
I have the bottom of your eyes to look for gold
The colour of your skin to read the seasons
The hollow of your shoulder as horizon line
When lazily I roll up and fall asleep

At the country of your body
At the country of your body
At the country of your body

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - The misfortune of loving

Original Title: "Le malheur d'aimer"
Year: 1971

What do you know of the simplest things?
The days are suns in disguise
Of which at night dream the roses
All the fires go away in smoke
What do you know of the misfortune of loving?

I have looked for you at the back of the bedrooms
Where the lamp was lit up
Our steps did not ring there together
Nor our arms on us closed up
What do you know of the misfortune of loving?

I have looked for you at the window
The parks are perfumed in vain
Where can you, where can you well be?
What's the point of living during the month of may?
What do you know of the misfortune of loving?

What do you know of the long wait
And of living only to name you
God, always the same and different
And of you, I only to blame
What do you know of the misfortune of loving?

That I forget myself and I remain
Like the rower without rowing
Do you know how long it's to die
While listening to yourself being consumed
Do you know the misfortune of loving?

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Serge Reggiani - The absence

Original Title: "L'absence"

Year: 1971

It's a beating shutter
It's a a light tear
On the sheet where recently
You laid your arm
While downstairs
The street talks alone
Someone is selling mandarins
A marine blue lady
Takes her goddaughter for a walk
The absence, here it is

The absence
Of a child, of a love
The absence is the same
Once we have said "I love you"
One day...
The silence is the same

It's a falling night
It's a poetry as well
Where the doves were passing
One night of jealousy
A book is open
You touched that page
You cracked that glass
When you got back from a long trip
The luggages are remaining
The absence, here it is

The absence
Of a child, of a love
The absence is the same
Once we have said "I love you"
One day...
The silence is the same

It's a beating shutter
It's, on a calendar, the cross
Of an old date
Where we were saying "you" to one another
The vases are empty
Where we would have put the bouquets
And the miror is getting wrinkles
Where the past is on the lookout
I hear the noise of a footstep
The absence, here it is

The absence
Of a child, of a love
The absence is the same
Once we have said "I love you"
One day...
The silence is the same

Léo Ferré - With time

Original Title: "Avec le temps"
Year: 1971

With time
With the time, goes, everything goes away
We forget the face and we forget the voice
The heart, when it doesn't beat anymore, there is no point looking further
You have to let things go and it's fine

With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
The other whom we adored, we looked for under the rain
The other we were making out at the bend of a glance
between the words, between the lines and under the blusher
Of a disguised oath which goes away to sleep
With time everything vanishes

With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
Even the best memories it pulls one of those faces
like at the mall I rummage around the death's shelves
the saturday evening when the tenderness goes away on its own

With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
The other in whom we believed for a cold, for a little something
The other to whom we gave wind and jewels
For whom we'd have sold our soul for a few pennies
In front of whom we dragged like the dogs drag
With time, goes, everything goes fine.

With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
We forget about the passions and we forget the voices
that told you very low the words of the poor people
Don't come back too late, take care not to get cold

With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
And we feel ourselves whitened like an exhausted horse
And we feel ourselves iced in a bed of fortune
And we feel ourselves alone maybe but cushy
And we feel ourselves swindled by the lost years
Then really...with time...we do not love anymore

Live Recording:

Philippe Léotard's version (1994):

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - To love to the point of losing one's mind

Original title: "Aimer à perdre la raison"
Text: Aragon (1963)
Year: 1971

To love to the point of losing one's mind
To love to the point of not knowing what to say
To the point of having nothing but you as horizon
And only experience seasons
Through the pain of departure
To love to the point of losing one's mind

Ah it's always you that is being hurt
It's always your broken mirror
My poor happiness, my weakness
You who is being insulted, and is being neglected
Tormented in every flesh

To love to the point of losing one's mind
To love to the point of not knowing what to say
To the point of having nothing but you as horizon
And only experience seasons
Through the pain of departure
To love to the point of losing one's mind

Hunger, tiredness and cold
All the world's miseries
It's through my love that I believe in them
In them I carry my cross
And from their nights my night founds itself

To love to the point of losing one's mind
To love to the point of not knowing what to say
To the point of having nothing but you as horizon
And only experience seasons
Through the pain of departure
To love to the point of losing one's mind

All poems written by Louis Aragon