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!

Julos Beaucarne - Elskamp - Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine

Text: Max Elskamp
Year: 1967

My father discovered the poem by Max Elskamp and directly went over to Julos so that he'd put it in music as it was about their hometown. They both spent the night creating the song. Julos ended up publishing an extended play with four Max Elskamp poems.

Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine
Oh my mother from the Ecaussinnes
Now so far away who is asleep
Do you remember the summer days ?

Over there in August, when we were going
To visit our parents
In their castle of Belle-Tête²
Built in stones from our region

And who then made celebration
To you, their daughter, as well as to us
In this sweet Wallonia
Of clear summer, over there, in Hainaut

Where we were hearing some harmony
Like a voice coming from above
The noise of the cisels on the stones
And who sang under the hammers

Like bells ringing in the air
Or sea in the distance raising her waters
While like thunders
Were passing the trains under the elm trees

Oh my mother from the Ecaussines
It's your blood which speaks in me
And my soul which confides itself
In You, and of love, and of faith

Because you were to me like Mary
Even though I am not Jesus
And when you were gone
I knew I had lost everything

Oh Claire Suzanne Adolphine
Oh my mother from the Ecaussinnes
Now so far away who is asleep
Do you remember the summer days ?

²Belle-Tête would mean "Pretty head" although I couldn't find trace of such a castle

Léo Ferré - I love you

Original Title : "Je t'aime"
Year: 1982

I love you
When there is the sea and then the horses
Making rounds like in the movie
But it's way more beautiful in your arms
When there is the sea and then the horses

When reason is wrong
And our eyes play at toppling themselves
And we don't know who is the boss
When reason is wrong

When we'd miss the end of the world
And we'd sell eternity
For that eternal second
When we'd miss the end of the world

When the devil sees us turn pale
When it's not possible to draw anymore
The love flower which is going to open up
When the devil sees us turn pale

When the machine has started
When we are not sure where we are anymore
And we wait to see what is going to happen

I love you

I love you for your voice, for your eyes on the night
Pour those shouts that you shout from the bottom of the pillows
And for that movement of the sea, for your life
That looks like the sea climing up to drown me

I love you for your belly where I'm going to get you
When your eyes look for the night that swings
To my hollow that digs you and from which my hurt life
Runs like a torrent in the bed of the silence

I love you for your open mug over the night
When your sap climbs like from the bottom of the eras
Boils in your belly and that I curse you
To be at the same time my sister, my angel, my light

I love you
When there is the sea and then the horses
Making rounds like in the movie
But it's way more beautiful in your arms
When there is the sea and then the horses

When reason is wrong
And our eyes play at toppling themselves
And we don't know who is the boss
When reason is wrong

When the devil sees us turn pale
When it's not possible to draw anymore
The love flower which is going to open up
When the devil sees us turn pale

When the machine has started
When we are not sure where we are anymore
And we wait to see what is going to happen

I love you

Barbara - Wait for my joy to come back

Original Title : "Attendez que ma joie revienne"
Year : 1963

Wait for my joy to come back
And for that memory to die
Of that love of so much sorrow
Which never stop dying
Before telling me 'I love you'
Before I'm able to tell it to you
Wait for my joy to come back
So that I can smile in the morning

Leave me. Sorrow takes me away
And I sail on my delirium
Leave me. Open that door.
Leave me. I'll come back
I'll wait for my joi to come back
And for that memory to be dead
Of that love of so much sorrow
For which I wanted to die
I'll wait for my joy to come back
So that I can smile in the morning
For the wind to have dried up my sorrow
And the night to have calmed my delirium

There is, I heard, a shore
Where one heals from the ill of loving
Dead loves are stranded there
Black shipwrecks from the past
If you want for my joy to come back
For me to be able to smile in the morning
Towards that country where sorrow dies
I beg you, let me go
Of my past loves,
The memory must perish.
So that, freed from my chain
Towards you, I could come back

Then, I make the promise to you
Together we'll go pick up
In the crazy garden of tenderness
The flower of love which will open up
But it's too early to tell you I love you
Too early to hear you say it
The voice I hear is his
They are alive, my memories
Forgive-me: It's him I love
The past can not die

Edith Piaf - You are everywhere

Original Title : "Tu es partout"
Year : 1943

We were loving each other quite tenderly
Like all lovers love one another
And then one day you left me
Since I am desperate
I see you everywhere in the sky
I see you everywhere on the earth
You are my joy and my sun
My night, my days, my clear dawns

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
All things that are around me
Even life only represents you
Sometimes I dream that I'm in your arms
And that you are speaking to my ear in a low tone
You are saying things that make the eyes close
And me, I find that wonderful

Maybe someday you'll come back
I know that my heart will wait for you
You will not be able to forget
The days we have spent
My eyes are constantly searching for you
Listen carefully, my heart is calling you
We will be able to love each other so well
You will see life will be beautiful ...

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
All things that are around me
Even life only represents you
Sometimes I dream that I'm in your arms
And that you are speaking to my ear in a low tone
You are saying things that make the eyes close
And me, I find that wonderful

Julos Beaucarne - Victor Hugo - I was not thinking about Rose

Original Title : "Je ne songeais pas à Rose"
Text: Victor Hugo (1856)
Year: 1969

I was not thinking about Rose
Rose came with me to the woods
We were talking about something
But I don't remember about what

I was cold like the marbles
I was walking mindlessly
I was talking of the flowers of the trees
Her eye seemed to imply : "After ?"

Dew was offering its pearls
The thicket its parasols
I was going forward, I was listening to the blackbirds
And Rose the nightingales

I, sixteen years old, and the morose look
Her twenty, her eyes were shining
The nightingales were singing Rose
And the blackbirds were whistling at me

Rose, straight on her hips
Raised her beautiful trembling arm
To grab a blackberry from the branches.
I did not see her white arm

Some water was running, fresh and hollow,
On the velvet mosses
And the loving nature
Was sleeping in the big deaf woods

Rose untied her shoe
And put, with an ingenuous look,
Her pretty little foot in the pure water
I did not see her naked foot

I did not know what to tell her
I was following her in the woods
Seeing her smile sometimes
And sigh a few times

I only saw she was beautiful
When coming out of the big deaf woods
- So be it, let's not think about it no more ! She said
- So be it, let's not think about it no more ! She said
I'm still thinking about it since

Jacques Bertin - The one who had the hair down the small of her back

Text: "Celle qui avait les cheveux dans les reins"
Year: 1975

The one who had the hair down the small of her back
Is she still kneeling over my head ?
At night, when I sleep, do I enter her garden ?
Without waking up I go down to her place again
I recognize the familiar objects one by one
The steps of stone, the pond, the shed
The silks I like and which she dresses herself in
The page where she is, streaked with black and lace
Teenage girl whose body I loved
I am thinking of you, I am preparing, I am dreaming
Night comes back, lost is your hand
Remain in my shoulder, Oh turtledove !