Léo Ferré - Aragon - You won't come back from it

Original Title: "Tu n'en reviendras pas"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Year: 1959

You won't come back you from it you who ran after the girls
Young man who I have seen the heart beating exposed
When I teared your shirt and neither you
You won't come back from it old Manille player

whom a shell cut in two sideways
For once he had a sensational game
And you the tatooed, the former legionnaire
You will survive a long time without face, without eyes

We leave God knows to where, it's of a bad dream
We will glide along the line of fire
Somewhere it's starting to not be a game anymore
The good men there are waiting for replacements

Roll in the distance, roll train of the last glows
The soldiers asleep that your dance shakes
Let the forehead lean and bend their neck
It smells of tobocco breath and sweat

How to look at you without seeing your fates
Bethroted to the earth and promised to pains
The night-light gives you the color of tears
You vaguely move your condemned legs

Already the stone thinks where your name is written
Already you are no more than a golden word on our squares
Already the memory of your love fades away
Already you only exist for having perished

Barbara's version:


Catherine Sauvage's version:


All poems written by Louis Aragon

Philippe Léotard - Louis Aragon - Is this how men live?

Original Title: "Est-ce ansi que les hommes vivent"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Music: Léo Ferré
Year: 1961

Everything is matter of scenery
Changing of bed, changing of body
What for? As it's again
I who betrays myself
I who drags myself and lie around
And my shadow undresses itself
In the arms alike of girls
Where I believed I found a country
Light heart, changing heart, heavy heart
The time to dream is quite short
What should be done of my nights
What should be done of my days
I had nor love nor residence
Nowhere where I live or die
I was passing like the rumor
I fell asleep like the noise

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

It was an unreasonable weather
The deads had been put on the table
We were making sand castles
We took wolves for dogs
Everything was changing pole and shoulder
Was the play funny or not
I if I didn't hold my part well
It was because I didn't understand anything

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

In the Hohenzollern district
Between the Saar and the barracks
Like the lucerne's flowers
Blossomed Lola's breasts
She had a swallow's heart
On the brothel's couch
I come to lie down beside her
among the hiccups of the pianola

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

The sky was grey with clouds
There flew wild gooses
That were shouting death in passing
Above the houses of the quays
I saw them through the window
Their sad song entered in my being
And I thought I was recognizing
some Rainer Maria Rilke
She was brown and though pale
Her hair fell over her hips
And the week and the sunday
She opened her naked arms to everyone
She had earthenware eyes
She worked valiantly
For an artilleryman from Mainz
Who never came back from it

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

There are other soldiers in town
And the night the civilians go up
Put mascara on your eyelashes
Lola who will soon go away
It was in april at five o'clock
At daylight that in your heart
A dragoon plunged his knife

Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance

Léo Ferré's version:


Catherine Sauvage's version:


Monique Morelli's version:

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Monique Morelli - Aragon - Ferré - It would have taken

Original Title: "Il n'aurait fallu"
Music: Léo Ferré
Text: Louis Aragon
Year: 1961 (Léo Ferré's version), 1966 (Morelli's version)

It would have taken
just another moment
For death to come
But a bare hand
then came
which took mine

Who gave back
their lost colors
to the days, to the weeks
Its reality
to the immense summer
of human things

I, who trembled
Always, I don't know
from which anger
Two arms have been enough
to give my life
a big necklace of air

Just a movement
That gesture while sleeping
soft which is brushing on me
A calm breath
Less than a dew
against my shoulder

A forehead resting
on me in the night
two big opened eyes
and everything looked to me
like a wheat field
in this universe

A tender garden
In the grass where suddenly
Verbena is growing
And my deceased heart
is born again to the perfume
which makes shadow soft

It would have taken
just another moment
For death to come
But a bare hand
then came
which took mine

Léo Ferré's version
Catherine Sauvage's version:

Jacques Douai's version:


All poems written by Louis Aragon