Original Title: "Je t'attends aux grilles des routes"
Text: Luc Bérimont
Year: 1988
I wait for you at the gates of the roads
At the crossroads of the wind of the sleep
I shout your name from the bottom of the holds
From the birdless marshes
From the bottom of that cast iron desert
Where I lay one by one my steps
I wait for the source of your arms
Of your hair of your breath
I wait for the source of your arms
Of your hair of your breath
You are terrible You chain me up
You devastate me You make me
I wait for you like the forest
Inextricable entangled
Wooven with foxes and jays
But which the morning makes sing.
I wait for you at the gates of the roads
At the crossroads of the wind of the sleep
I shout your name from the bottom of the holds
From the birdless marshes
From the bottom of that cast iron desert
Where I lay one by one my steps
I wait for the source of your arms
Of your hair of your breath
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: "Madame à minuit (Noël)"
Text: Luc Bérimont
Music: Orchestre Jacques Mallebay
Year: 1962 (Léo Ferré's), 1982 (Bertin's)
Madam, at midnight, do you think we are still up ?
Madam, at midnight, do you think we are laughing ?
The wind of winter shouts in my ears
Land of Christmas, so white and alike
So poor, so old and so hard as well.
At the end of the night, the farms are dozing.
Padlocks drawed on the wine's flower
But the fire's flower ferments there and keeps watch
Like the sun at the hollow of the mills
Like the sun at the hollow of the mills
At the frozen streams, the stone is ready to split
In cold weather, there are no mad people anymore
The hour of midnight, that hour when we sing
will sting my heart way better than holly
will sting my heart way better than holly
I had countless loves and friends
Plaited laughs at the summer's sky
Then, here I'm alone, poking shadows
The winter's cartage took everything away
The winter's cartage took everything away
Why this Christmas, why those lights
Nothing else came but tears
I shan't bite in the bitter orange again
And the memory of you tears my heart
And the memory of you tears my heart
Madam, at midnight, do you think we are still up ?
Madam, at midnight, do you think we are laughing ?
The wind of winter shouts in my ears
Christmas land, so white and alike
So poor, so old and so hard as well.
