Jacques Bertin - For Julos

Original Title: "A Julos"
Year: 1975

We went, blinded by the sun of winter
In that tiny cemetary in the middle of winter
With a few white graves lost in the greenness of winter

We were nothing but a punctuation of the immense space
Lost in a movie, weirdly overexposed
that jumps constantly and the scene starts again
And the derisory ritual continues that is set on us

The musicians, the fingers absent, were playing the music of your kingdom
Your kingdom, my poor friend, bracing with all its strength
They were playing as if to say "Farewell, we remained proud"
They were playing, each in its terror creating lines
against the merciless who runs much faster than us.

A horse, who was probably a cousin of the dead woman,
Was looking at us and ate the green grass
Teaching us without letting on, lessons of tenderness

I do not bring back words from this outrun in the blinding sadness
That is the closest from the sun.
Comrade of comrades I came back empty handed
Went through the door made of metal and air where we have that other day hooked our fingers

If you find words it's because you won't be back
And I, I tell you that for the living, yours, mines, all those I love
I'm scared of that beauty there that is coming in the windscreen
The other day it was me who was put into the ground and I was looking at myself become nothing
I say "you have my friendship" it's a call for help

I bleed in that crossroads of hundred thousand road I'm scared
Oh if it's possible for someone to pull me back
Of only a quarter of a second
To soothe the heart

I hear the breath already of the hairy horse
He tells me that I have to be reconciled once for all with the earth
And prepare myself to disperse my consciousness in the earth
Reconcile myself with the earth and its breathing which is the song.

Jacques Brel - The Quest

Original Title: "La Quête"
Year: 1968

To dream an impossible dream
To bear the grief of the departures
To burn of a possible fever
To leave, no one leaves

To love, up to the tear
To love, even too much, even badly
Attempt, without strength nor armor
To reach the unreachable star

Such is my quest:
To follow the star
No matter my odds
No matter the time
Or my despair
And then struggle always
Without question or rest
Damn oneself
For the gold of a love word
I do not know if I will be that hero
But my heart would be peacefull
and the cities would splash themselves with blue
because a miserable man...

Keeps burning, even though having burned everything
Keeps burning, even too much, even badly
To reach, to the point of tearing one self
To reach the unreachable star

Jacques Bertin - The blue lips

Original Title: "Les Lèvres Bleues"
Year: 1989

Your blue lips, I said, like a lagoon, your painted lips
Opening sky on a meadow of mother-of-pearl, veined with streams
Your breasts, I said, I wanted meticulously painted, O saints
stone and moon colored and to mark your shoulder with birds' beaks

A pendant going down, heavy, by a thread from your belly
Like to the temple's facade as well: the man that had his throat cut,
Remember, and whose blood was a cover on the wandering dawn
You drank it, a faceless teenager was watching you.

Voices, thousand of voices, were binding you, were reading you evil and proud
You found back sacred words, lost, germinated. The night was turning
on its base until your price was set. Me, I was trembling
from fever, in the dark door at midnight rings the light

A motif of horses rearing, lacquered on the inner legs
bridles and thighs I want, picked up like a tear each
And you stamp, the bit in the teeth, puffing and panting, the tongue violent
The dance or the hate shooting, I want pearls of sweat

Your wrists are held at your waist, this castle
Is the one that has been drestroyed the axe in the hip
And your gaze, last one in the marble like a knife,
Broke and the blade is a wing in the white countryside

I've crawled in the sunken ships, the forest of foam or fawn
Wet collar against collar pushed the tapestry opening
infinitely the cavern of rain where gold is widow. The time
stops when it hears your laugh that is new and of a child.

I love you like a poor coming back from the holy wars
Head bare and begging from farms for a bit of bread
And each farm is a treasure it's true, laid in a hand
I love you like this, stay above the golden farms your painted lips
Your blue lips, like a laggoon, I've said, your painted lips.

Barbara - The girl in love

Original Title: "L'amoureuse"
Year: 1968

The one who spread her arms out,
The one who loved so strongly,
But who didn't know,
That loving again and again
It burns you, it damns you

That one who, clear eyes,
walked arms spread wide
and who wanted to give everything
and take everything
That one went away
The heart, from love, bursted
The arms exhausted from spreading
and from waiting

Was she innocence, was she dementia
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

She played, as a child
already, at catching the wind
In her frail arms
But she retained nothing
The wind it comes, it goes
And it's unfaithful
She discovered the sea
The bitch gave her the green eye
In a dress of foam
She threw herself into it
Her blond hair tangling up
to the reflections of the moon

Then she wanted as well
To steal a piece of night
That she thought, dazzled,
about holding tight against her
But came back the heart in sorrow
Water, it glides from your hands
The night it goes and it comes
And it's unfaithful

Was she innocence, was she dementia,
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

We shouted "It's enough
to desire tearing yourself apart,
b by giving and taking
To want to give your blood,
by burning yourself so and so
You will turn to ash".
She did not answer anything,
She was hoping when suddenly,
We still remember,
As winter had arrived
A man appeared to her
Who was walking toward her

She opened him her arms
And the man warmed up to them
Caressed her so much
That she became beautiful from it
It has been, the night and the day,
the time for warm loves,
And the man remained always
He was faithful

Innocence or dementia
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

Then winter disappeared
The birds came back
He said "Listen,
I hear the trees creak
The forest has awokened
I am resuming my journey"
Then, she stretched her arm out
It was the last time
And her knife thrusted
Inside the unfaithful
Then calm, she lied down
That's how we found her
Dead in the daybreak
of loving too much from love

Was she innocence, was she dementia,
She is dead henceforth
Noone will ever know
She died at daybreak
Of loving too much from love...

Jacques Bertin - That girl

Original Title: "Cette Fille"
Year: 1972

That girl who threw a glance at me in St Germain, I've followed her for a long time.
One night I dreamt that I was penetrating in the breasts of a blond under the velvet vest
She had your face but I was certain it wasn't you
Another time I saw her eyes again laying upon me in a basement.

You thought I was silent but she, the other one, she was calling me
You asked me "Do you love me?" but the question was elsewhere

That belly movement against me of a woman asking for love
Then on the sandbank were remaining objects and scattered gazes
And I need each one like in the plain the lights, the smokes
They are only asking for one thing that you go with them for a short time

In their novel, page after page, offered their shoulder against my shoulder
And I who everytime step back without giving myself

I was coming out from a girl's home, in the street rain was welcoming me
You felt my love that from very far I was coming back toward you
One day, I will take you with my power and I'll know the fervour of the gift
It will be this evening and I come back from a journey

You open the door for me, you are in tears. You tell me:
I was expecting you yesterday evening but it has been four years that I'm waiting for you.

Jacques Bertin - The love (making)

Original Title : "L'amour"
Year: 1968

Your belly where warmth spreads in a bench, velvet
settles itself to the brightness of my caresses
opens itself like a big fear
like a word under the sun
where would dry oriflammes
And your silent lips
that opens like chased water

At your waist, I place my lip like a cross on the horizon
My fist sinks in this silt
breath where your weakness dreams
Your breasts are going to drink at the river
between two flower beds
Of your thighs, thrown, tear
at the brambles the pleasure, the fear

Nude girl, brightened up girl
Unwinded ribbon and so beautiful
Feminine god wild and young
Supple, grace, linen and gardens
and who floats among the tulles
In the nylons and the basins
Reared up woman, rebellious woman
Quivering and the dragonflies

Only I know the tenderness
the palm layed, the sweetness
The embrace religious and well-behaved
The patience with heaviness

Only I know the insolence
and your shoulder with a golden laugh
and only I know the curve of your back with your modesty

O my wandering feline
Opened vegetale bowl
talking about space and vengeance
Spread woman, devout woman

Beauty who pants and learns
You didn't know yourself so beautiful
In your silences, your wetnesses
I'll force the oath from you

Run ! Go spread this kiss,
this rape at your scalding nape
on the benches, in the running water
and in the herbs of the salt-meadows

I penetrate the vague universe
the eternal sleep disturbed
of this estate between your legs
where flowers shiver by thousand

The heat swaying, dieing
the fever, the liana, the lip
leprosy, tide, cluster, my wife
wet from saliva and odors

Barely half-opened, glimpsed
Barely woken up a moment
This long scream of surrendered woman
where u shout your name so loudly

Love is like my journeys
With the pleasurable detours
and the city in the evening discovered
crouched, below near the bridges

The silence with the sleep,
A world where my evasive hand
looks for the last steams,
rocks the oblivion on which you get drunk

Oh my love, sleep languid
Your breasts are made drowsy in the air
and in the hems of love
Sink into the fervor

And I, I'm looking at the daylight.

Jacques Bertin - The reaches

Original Title: "Les Biefs"
Year: 1982

The evening
When you topple over in the sky
Toward your nocturnal adventure,
I'd like to remember who I'm loving.

It's too late, the reaches are closed
Would I be as lonely with the chant of the poplars
When there will be noone left on earth

The evening
When you topple over in the sky,
Hope edged with its sorrows,
I'm drawing you with my hand
The reaches of the heart
Are only asleep

The song of the trees
is the life which holds us together
I'm everywhere
Looking after you on this earth

The evening
When you topple over in the sky,
The forehead burnt to the tomorrows,
I'm the air and the sleeping wind
The reaches of the heart
tremble until the morning

It's enough for me that you know me
attentive in the shadow
I'm never lonely
You do not forget about me

The reaches of the heart
trembles until morning

It's enough for me that you know me
attentive in the shadow
I'm never lonely
You do not forget about me