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:

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

Serge Reggiani - Of velvet and silk

Original Title: "De velours et de soie"
Text: Boris Vian
Year: 1964

Wild flowers
Oceans of the world
Blond islands
Had always tempted me

Done the big travels
Done the orange skies
All the odd shivers
You have given those to me

Of velvet and silk
Like your perfumed skin
Of light and velvet
Like your eyes

Of rose and light
Like the taste of your mouth
Of blood and fresh rose
Like your cheeks

Of fire, gold and blood
Like a kiss you give to me
Of silver, fire and gold
Like your body which gives itself

Of sun and silver
Your hair in the purple wind
Of pleasure and sun
Like a night in your arms.

Serge Reggiani - Apollinaire - Under Mirabeau bridge

Serge Reggiani's version

Original Title: "Sous le pont Mirabeau"
Text: Guillaume Apollinaire
Music: Léo Ferré
Year: 1953 (Léo Ferré's version),1972 (Reggiani's version)

Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
So does our loves
Must I remember it
Joy always comes after sorrow

Come the night the hour rings
The days go away I remain

Hands in hands let's keep facing one another
While under the bridge
of our arms pass
Of eternal gazes the wave is so weary

Come the night the hour rings
The days go away I remain

Love goes away like that running water
Love goes away
How slow life is
And how violent hope is

Come the night the hour rings
The days go away, I remain

Pass the days and pass the weeks
Nor time passed
Nor loves come back
Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Come the night the hour rings
The days go away I remain

Léo Ferré's version:


Yvette Giraud's version:

Serge Reggiani - The old couple

Original Title: "Le vieux couple"
Text: Jean-Loup Dabadie.
Music: Jacques Datin
Year: 1972

What I like about this duo
It's that you make the higher voice
It's you who know, you who say
You who think and I who is
But on the big evenings when you are crying
When you are afraid in your rowing boat
I am the one talking for hours
All in all we are an old couple

I don't remember where I have met you anymore
It was at school or at a puppet show
I remember that ingenuous person
Who had lost his compass
Since I stopped you from drinking
Except the big evenings in your rowing boat
When you sing to me about your setbacks
All in all we are an old couple

With your spaniel face
Which did not learn how to swim
With my face to remain alone
Behind half shandy's
The big evenings in your rowing boat
When we talk about your moods
And that you slander my wife
All in all we are an old couple

The sixteenth August Nineteen sixty
I married that lovely lady
Five days later, I was gone
And you were tucking me in my bed
Then the night started
Then the night started
Of which we believed we were the stars
But we were nothing more than the cicadas

We fought, we lost one another
You often started new relationships
And the best is that you betrayed me
But you held no grudge against me
And during the big evenings in your rowing boats
You know my habits well
I know your solitude well
All in all we are an old couple

My friend, my buddy, my brother
My old chance, my galley
My child, my Judas, my judge
My comfortance, my shelter
My brother, my counterfeiter
My friend, my jack of heart
I wouldn't want you to die
I wouldn't want you to die.

Serge Reggiani - Venice is not in Italy

Original Title: "Venise n'est pas en Italie"
Text: Claude Lemesle
Year: 1977

You don't have enough money to take a plane or even a train
You wouldn't be able to offer her a one way trip to Melun
But you take her away
As you love her
On oceans of which the sailors
Have never seen the end
You have the sky that your windows have drawn
And the sun on a theater movie
But you don't care
But you are rich
You are since you love one another

Venice isn't in Italy
Venice it's at anyone's place
Make love to her in an attic
And make fun of the gondoliers
Venise is not where you believe it is
Venise today is at your place
It's where you go, it's anywhere you want
It's the place where you are happy

You aren't in that room a bit common
This evening you have a date on the canal
Fireworks
The small boat glides
You are going to see everything, discover everything
Included the Bridge of Sighs
It'll last a year or an eternity
The time for a god to come and tell you "enough sung"
Does it matter
It's the holidays
All that because you love one another

Venice isn't in Italy
Venice it's at anyone's place
Make love to her in an attic
And make fun of the gondoliers
Venise is not where you believe it is
Venise today is at your place
It's where you go, it's anywhere you want
It's the place where you are happy

Venice isn't in Italy
Venice it's at anyone's place
It's anywhere, it's important
But it's not any time
Venise it's when you see some sky
Run under cherry plum bridges
It's the other side of rainy mornings
It's the place where you are happy

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:

Serge Reggiani - Georges Moustaki - Your daughter is twenty years old

Original Title: "Votre fille a vingt ans"
Text: Georges Moustaki

Year: 1968, 1970 (Moustaki's release)

Your daugther is twenty years old, how time is flying by
Madam, yesterday still she was so small
And her first torments are your first wrinkles
Madam, and your first worries

Each of her twenty years counted twice for you
You know already all what she is discovering
You have forgotten the things which trouble her
Madam, and troubled as well

People thought she was pretty and here she is beautiful
For an individual almost as young as her
A boy who resembles to the one for whom
Madam, you had grown in beauty

They make for themselves a garden from a corner of bad weeds
Knotting the prime of life into a superb bouquet
It has been a long while that you have been put in a spray
Madam, spring is forgetting about you

Each night which seems to you similar to every night
While you are dreaming your reasonable dreams
Of pleasure and of love they make themselves guilty
Madam, in the hollow of the same bed

But guilty ones never had so much innocence
So little regrets and so little concern
That they do not even ask for you indulgence
Madam, for their tender offence

Up to the day when maybe at the first tear
At the first love's and woman's sorrow
It'll be up to you to smile Madam
Madam, for her to smile at you.
for her to smile at you.

Moustaki's version:

Boris Vian - The Deserter

Original Title: "Le Déserteur"
Year: 1955, 1964 (Reggiani's version)

Mister the President
I am writing you a letter
That you will maybe read
If you have the time

I've just received
My military papers
To go to war
Before wedsneday evening

Mister the President
I don't want to do it
I am not on earth
To kill poor people

It's not to make you mad
I have to tell you
I have made my decision
I am going to desert

Since I am born
I have seen my dad die
I have seen my brothers go away
And cry my children

My mother suffered so much
That she is in her grave
And does not care of the bombs
And does not care of the worms

When I was a prisonner
I have been robbed of my wife
I have been robbed of my soul
And of all my dear past

Tomorrow early morning
I will close my door
At the nose of the years bygone
I will go on the roads

I will beg my life
On the roads of France
From Britany to Provence
And I will tell people

Refuse to obey
Refuse to do it
Don't go to war
Refuse to go away

If one has to give his blood
Go give yours
You have an holier-than-thou attitude*
Mister the President

If you pursue me
Warn your gendarmes²
That I won't have any weapon
And that they will be able to shoot

*You are a good apostle is the word by word translation
²gendarmes are policemen belonging to the army branch

Serge Reggiani live:

Serge Reggiani's version:

Marcel Mouloudji's version:

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.

Serge Reggiani - Prévert - Barbara

Text: Jacques Prévert
Slightly modified translation from: http://parolesinenglish.wordpress.com/

Year: 1949 (First reading by Montand), 1953 (first sung by Y. Montand), 1966 (Reggiani's version)

Remember Barbara
It was raining ceaselessly on Brest that day
And you were walking smiling
Beaming, delighted, dripping
Under the rain
Remember Barbara
It was raining ceaselessly on Brest
And I passed you in the rue de Siam
You were smiling
And me I was smiling the same smile
Remember Barbara
You who I didn’t know
You who didn’t know me
Remember
Remember that day anyway
Don’t forget
A man under an overhang was taking shelter
And he yelled your name
Barbara
And you ran to him under the rain
Dripping delighted beaming
And you threw yourself in his arms
Remember that Barbara
And don’t be mad if I speak to you familiarly
I speak familiarly to everyone I love
Even if I’ve only seen them once
I speak familiarly to everyone in love
Even if I don’t know them
Remember Barbara
Don’t forget
This good and happy rain
On your happy face
On this happy city
This rain on the sea
On the naval arsenal
On the boat from Ouessant
Oh Barbara
What a bullshit, war
What’s become of you now
Under this rain of iron
Of fire of steel of blood
And the one who took you in his arms
Lovingly
Is he dead, disappeared or yet still living
Oh Barbara
It’s raining ceaselessly on Brest
Like it rained before
But it’s no longer the same and everything’s damaged
It’s a rain of mourning terrible and desolate
It's not even a storm
Of iron of steel of blood anymore
Simply some clouds
That die like dogs
Dogs who disappear
Along the water over Brest
And go to rot far away
Far away very far away from Brest
Of which nothing remains.

Mouloudji's version (1966):

Yves Montand's version (1953):

Les Frères Jacques's version (1951):

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

Monique Morelli - Villon - Epitaph (Ballad of the hangmen)

Original Title: "Epitaphe (Ballade des pendus)"
Text: François Villon (XVth Century)
Year: 1974, 1968 (Reggiani's reading)

Brothers human who after us live
Do not have the hearts hardened against us
Because, if pity of us poors have
God would rather have mercy of you
You see us here tied up by five or six
As of the flesh, that we have fed too much,
It's devoured and roten for a long time
And we, the bones, become ash and powder
Of our misfortune let noone laugh about:
But pray God that all of us want to absolve!

If brothers we call you, you do not have
Disdain from it, although we have been slayed
By Justice. However you know
That all men do not have the mind go stale
Pardon us, as we are chilled to the bone
Toward the Son of the Virgin Marie
Let his grace not be dried up for us
Preserving us from the infernal thunderbolt
We are dead, do not harass our soul
But pray God that all of us want to absolve!

The rain has soaked us and washed us
And the sun dried us out and blackened
Magpies, crows have our eyes hollowed out
And teared off the beard and the eyebrows
Never a moment are we sitting:
Then here and there, like the wind varies
At his will, endlessly, sweeps us along,
More pecked by birds than a thimble
So do not be of our brotherhood
But pray God that all of us want to absolve!

Prince Jesus, who on everything has control
Be careful that Hell does not rule over us
To him have nothing to do or settle with
Men here have no mockery
But pray God that all of us want to absolve!

Serge Reggiani's version:

Serge Reggiani - Paul's song

Original Title: "La Chanson de Paul"
Year: 1975

This evening, I drink!
You can still turn the light off
And your white hand gliding on the rail
Go up to your bedroom
To look for your dark sleep
Me, I stay downstairs tonight
And I drink!

Yes. I promised
Yes, I'm still drinking anyway!
Go! I love you.
Go away in your night

I drink...
To the women who didn't love me
To the children I didn't have
But to you who wanted of me
I drink...
To those houses that I left
To the friends who made me fall
But to you who kissed me
But to you who kissed me

That evening
We were coming out of the cinema
The weather was bad
In the Vivienne street
I was very elegant
I was wearing my fur-lined jacket
You, you had your red coat
And I see your mouth again
Like a fruit under the rain
Like a fruit under the rain

This evening, I drink!
Thankfully, I am never drunk.
Sleep...Tonight, I will write my book.
It's time, it's been ages
It's my novel, it's my story
There are things you only write
only when it's very late
only when it's well into the night
Sleep, I love you
Sleep, in my life

I drink...
To the letters I didn't write
To bastards who deserve them
But I don't remember where they live
I drink...
To all the ideas I had
I drink to the ideas who got me
But to you who defended me
But to you who defended me

That day,
In a café of the 15th
You told me: "I love you"
I wasn't listening
There was a whole team
We were talking politics
I fight with a guy
And you took me away
Like a wounded child
Like a wounded child

I drink
To the combat you lead
To take me away from the party
Tonight, I drink to your defeat
I drink
To the time spent cursing you
making you laugh, cherishing you
To the time spent aging you

I drink...
To the women who didn't love me
To the children I didn't have
But to you who wanted of me
But to you who wanted of me

Serge Reggiani - My child, my love

Original Title: "Mon enfant, mon amour" or "Le petit garçon"
Year:1967

Tonight my little boy
My child, my love
Tonight, it's raining on the house
My child, my love
How you look like her!
We are staying both
We are going to play together
We are here both
alone

Tonight she doesn't come back home
I do not know anymore, I don't know
She will write tomorrow maybe
We will have a letter
It's raining on the garden
I'm going to make some fire
I have no sorrow
We are here both
Alone

Wait, I know stories
Once upon a time
It's raining in my memory
I think, don't cry
Wait, I know stories
But it's a bit cold tonight
A story about people that love each others
A story about people that love each others

You will see
Don't go
Don't leave me

I do not know how to make fire anymore
My child, my love
I can't do much anymore
My boy, my love
How you look like her
We are here both
Lost among things
In this big room
Alone

We are going to play at war
And you'll fall asleep
Tonight she won't be here
I don't know anymore, I don't know
I don't like winter
There is no fire anymore
There is nothing else to do
but to play together
Alone

Wait, I know stories
Once upon a time
I don't have a memory anymore
I believe, don't cry
Wait, I know stories
But it's a bit late, tonight
A story of people that loved one another
And who played at war

Listen to me
She isn't there anymore
No...don't cry!

Live version:
The live version is a bit different and starts with the following words:
It's not me who sings
It's the flowers I drank
It's not me who laughs
It's the wine I drank
It's not me who cries
It's my love...lost

Serge Reggiani - Moustaki - This evening, my love

Original Title: "Ce soir mon amour"
Text: George Moustaki
Year: 1973 (Reggiani's album), 1974 (Moustaki's album)

This evening my love, I do not love you anymore
You are further than the distance between us
And even more absent because you are nowhere
More a stranger than the first to come along

This evening my love I do not look for you anymore
Among my memories at the bottom of my memory
I do not wait for you anymore on the platform of any station
I barely remember having waited for you there

I know that we were drinking wine after love
That our nights started when the day rose
Like a torrent of ebony your hair on your neck
And your hurt gaze when you make sheep eyes

This evening my love I do not cheat on you anymore
with that girl sleeping by my side
I was alone I asked her to stay
I'm alone very often and I get used to it

This evening my love I do not miss you anymore
I do not miss you. I miss loving
not being useless, inanimate
having nothing to lose and having lost everything

I know your madness I know your modesty
I know that we look alike like brother and sister
I know your smell, I know your perfume
I know you by heart and I do not know anything nomore

About you my love whom I do not love anymore
without succeeding to finally feel free
Alike to a dancer who would lose balance
Like a prince into disgrace, like a fallen angel.

Serge Reggiani - Almost nothing would be enough

Original Title: "Il suffirait de presque rien"
Year: 1968

Almost nothing would be enough
Maybe ten years less
For me to tell you "I love you"

For me to take you by the hand
To take you to St Germain
To offer you another cream coffee

But why pretend
Girl, come on, look at me
And see the wrinkles parting us

What's the point of puting on an act
Of the old lover who feels younger
You would pretend to believe it yourself

Really what would we look like?
I already hear the comments:

She is pretty
How can he still please her
She in spring, he in winter

Almost nothing would be enough
still noone you know well
goes back through his youth

Don't be stupid and understand
If I was twenty like you
I'd cover you in promises

There is your smile
turning to water and capsizing
I don't want you to be sad

Imagine your life tomorrow
Next to a clown busy
making his last ring turn

Really what would you look like
I already hear the comments

She is pretty
How can he still please her
She in spring, he in winter

It's someone else than me tomorrow
Who will take you to St Germain
To take the first cream coffee

Almost nothing was enough
Maybe ten years less
For me to tell you "I love you"

On television in 1995:

Serge Reggiani - And then

Original Title: "Et puis"
Year: 1968

And then...and I was going to say: already
Childhood is getting distant
like a country from which we depart from
I only barely see the shore anymore
My love, my love

With you, I get under way then
to somewhere else, to something else
On board of my forties
And I take you away
over there in an image

I love you, you
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

And then...like we go to the country
when we would have lead a riotous life
We'll go to the sixties
In that house I love
In Provence
My love, my love

We would have made love and then
other boys well before the old days
And the old nights
If you behave well
You'll receive images

I love you, you
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

And then, but it's not tomorrow
The evening will have to come
I'll go on the path
where the bitch is waiting for us
One by one
My love, my love

When I'll be up in the clouds
It's somewhere else, it's yet something else
But without you you know
I'll be alone, there
In the other image

I love you, myself
who will never be a grown up
Don't ever leave me
I love you

Another version: