Monique Morelli - Villon - Ballad of Blois contest

Original Title: "Ballade du concours de Blois"
Text: François Villon (1458)
Year: 1974

I die of thirst beside the fountain
Hot as fire, and trembling tooth to tooth
In my own country, I am in a distant land
Near a blaze, shiver all burning
Bare as a worm, dressed like a president,
I laugh in tears and wait without hope
Taking my comfort back in sad despair
I rejoyce and have no pleasure at all
Powerful I am, without strength or power,
Welcomed gladly and spurned by each.

Nothing for me is sure but the uncertain matter
Obscure except what is completely obvious
Doubt I don't make except in certainties
Knowledge holds to a sudden accident
I win everything and remain loser
At daybreak, say: "God give you good evening!"
Lying on the wrong side I am greatly afraid of falling
I have means and if I have none of it
Expecting inheritance and of man I'm no heir
Welcomed gladly and spurned by each.

Taking care of nothing if I go through a lot of trouble
to acquire goods to which I'm no claimant
Who compliments me the most is the one who hurts me the most
And who is more true then tells more lies about me
My friend is the one who makes me understand
that a white swan is a black crow
And who harms me, believes he helps me provide
Truth, lies, today all is the same to me
I remember everything, can't imagine anything
Welcomed gladly and spurned by each.

Lenient Prince, may it please you to know
that I understand a lot and have no wit nor knowledge
Biased I am, alike to every law
What do I know more? What! Redeem what I’ve been pledged,
Welcomed gladly, and spurned by each.

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - What would I be without you?

Original Title: "Que serais-je sans toi?"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Year: 1965

What would I be without you who came to meet me
What would I be without you but an heart sleeping in the wood²
But this hour stopped at the dial of the watch
What would I be without you but this faltering

I've learned everything from you about the human things
And I've seen the world your way from then on.
I've learned everything from you: how you drink from fountains
How one reads in the sky, the distant stars
how from the passer-by who sings, you take up his song
I've learned everything from you up to the meaning of shiver

What would I be without you who came to meet me
What would I be without you but an heart sleeping in the wood
But this hour stopped at the watch's dial
What would I be without you but this faltering

I have learned everything from you as far as I'm concerned
That it's clear at noon, that a sky can be blue
That happiness isn't just a tavern's oil lamp
You took me by the hand in this modern hell
Where man doesn't know anymore what it's to be two
You took me by the hand like an happy lover

What would I be without you who came to meet me
What would I be without you but an heart sleeping in the wood
But this hour stopped at the watch's dial
What would I be without you but this faltering

Who talks of happiness often has sad eyes
Isn't it a sob of disappointment
A broken string at the guitarist's fingers
And nevertheless I tell you that happiness exists
Elsewhere than in dreams, elsewhere than up in the skies
Earth, Earth, here comes those unknown harbours

What would I be without you who came to meet me
What would I be without you but an heart sleeping in the wood
But this hour stopped at the dial of the watch
What would I be without you but this faltering

² link to the Sleeping Beauty

another version:


Sung by Marc Ogeret:

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Léo Ferré - Verlaine - Soul does it remember

Original title: "Âme te souvient-il"
Text: Paul Verlaine (1888)
Year: 1959

Soul, does it remember?
Soul, does it remember at the bottom of paradise
From Auteuil's station and trains of long ago
bringing you everyday, coming from the chapel?
So long ago already! Yet how I remember

After the first words of good morning and welcome
My old arm in yours we were leaving that Auteuil
And under the trees filled with a kind music
Our discussion was often metaphysical

Oh your strong arguments, your coalman's faith
Not without some tendency, Oh so frank! to deny
But left so quickly at the first step of doubt!
And then we came back, more than slow, by road
A bit of the long way, at my place, at our place rather
to have lunch of hardly anything, lightly smoking quick and early
And hurry a long time a vague work
My poor child, your voice in the Bois de Boulogne!

Studio version:

Christine Sèvres' version (1968):

Jacques Bertin - I would like a strange and very calm feast

Original Title: "Je voudrais une fête étrange et très calme"
Year: 1970

I'd like a strange and very calm party
with musicians, silent and sweet
It'd be during an evening of fall, a sunday
A very slow merry-go-round, a fine music

Naked women sitting on the white stone
are bending down to tie the shoe laces of children
Children in ribbons and who are pulling on white kites
Some women are humming a little, their head tilts

I would want eternal falls of leaves
Love in a sob, a light smile
Like we do between our fingers glide blades of grass
Women quietly distraught, lying down.

Streamer sailing like prayers
A danse in the grass and the grey sky very low
slowly, and the white and the red and the grey and the green
and threads of the Virgin are hanging on our arms

And to die at the knees of a very soft woman
Swings come and go, calls
Slowly on her heavy belly lay my head
And talk solemnly of the bodies, the day is going away
Laces, tulles, in the grass, a breeze
In the bodices hedges, nylons hang
Hair swinging softly, you see grey necks
and the arms send back, vaguely heavy balloons.

Maxime and Catherine Le Forestier - The sentimental education

Original Title: "L'éducation sentimentale"
Year: 1972

Tonight in the mist
We'll go, my brunette
pick up oaths
This wild flower
that wreaks havoc
In children hearts
For you, my princess,
I'd make braids out of it
And in your hair
These oaths, my beauty,
will turn you cruel
toward your lovers

Tomorrow at dawn
We'll go once again
glean in the fields
pick up promisses
Flowers of tenderness
And of feeling
And up the hill
In the waterfowls
You will lay down
Into my arms, my dear,
Moonlit
You will give yourself

It's at twillight,
When the dragonfly
falls asleep in the swamp
that we will have to, my neighbor,
leave the hill
And quickly come back
Don't say a word, my brunette,
Not even to the moon,
And I, on my own,
will go single-handed,
I will remain quiet
I won't say a word

Tonight in the mist
We'll go, my brunette
pick up oaths
This wild flower
that wreaks havoc
In children hearts
For you, my princess,
I'd make braids out of it
And in your hair
These oaths, my beauty,
will turn you cruel
toward your lovers

La Tordue - Aragon - The rose and the reseda

Modified translation from http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/aragon100210.html (by Yoshie Furuhashi)


Original Title: "La rose et le réséda"
Text: Louis Aragon (1943)
Year: 1995

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
Both loved the beauty
Imprisoned by soldiers
Which climbed the ladder?
And which stood guard below?

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn'?
What matters the name of
This light on their steps?
that one was of the church
And the other balked from it?

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
Both were faithful
with their lips, heart, arms
And both said that she will
live, time will tell

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
When the wheat is under the hail
Fool who is fussy
Fool who think of his little quarrels
In the heart of the common combat?

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
From the height of the citadel
The sentinel shot
Twice and one staggers
the other falls who will die

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
They are in prison
Who has the sadest pallet
Who freezes more then the other
Who prefers the rats?

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
A rebel is a rebel
Two sobs make a single knell
And when the cruel dawn arrives
They pass on

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
Repeating the name of the beauty
Neither of the two betrayed
And their blood runs red
Same color same vividness

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
It runs, and runs, and mingles
Into the earth it loved
So in the new season
Muscat grapes would ripen

The one who believed in heaven
The one who didn't
One runs and the other flies
From Brittany or Jura
And raspberries or plums
Crickets will sing again
Flute or cello, tell the story of
This double love that burnt
The lark and the swallow
The rose and the reseda

The poem said by Aragon himself:

All poems written by Louis Aragon

Monique Morelli - Pierre de Ronsard - The drunkard's dream

This one always make me think of Bosch

Original Title: "Le rêve de l'ivrogne"
Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978

I see here, I see there
I see thousand horned beasts
Thousand kids in the streets
From one comes out a big bull
On the other hops a kid²
One has the horns of a satyr
And from the belly of the other pulls
a thousand revolutions crocodile
I see towns and towers
I see some red and some green
Look at them there! I see them covered
with sweets and candied peas
I see some are dead, I see some are alive
I see some, look at them! that look like
the wheats that tremble under the wind

I catch sight of a camp of armed dwarves
I see some that are not developed
Truncated of thighs and legs
And if they have the eyes burning
At the hollow of the stomach are sitting
I see fifty of them, I see six of them
that are bellyless, and if they have a head
Appalling with a big crest

Here comes two clouds all full
with Moors that have no hands
Nor body and have the faces
alike to those of wild cats
Ones carry goats feet,
And the others only have on lipe
that alone paddles and inside
they have no jaw nor teeth

One is going late, the other gallops
One rushes foward onto the croup
Of an unbridled centaur
And the other guided by a giant
Wearing a bell on his forehead
Through the air rides a genette
One on his back loads a calf
The other in his hand holds a hammer
One with a sullen look
Arms his fist with a felling axe
One carries a javelin, the other a trident
And the other a brand all glowing

Some are riding cranes
And the others turtles
Going to hunt with the gods
I see the good Father happy
that is turning into hundred news
I see some that have no brain
And make a non alike heap
So to want to beat the sun
And to enclose it in the cave
Of St Patrick or of Averne
I see his sister defending him
I see the whole sky splitting
And the earth become cracked
And the charos threatening them

I see hundred thousand young satyres
Having young goats dewclaws
Scaring thousand naiads
I see the dryads dance
among the forests stamping on their feet,
And now combing their hair again
Then go swimming in the fountains
There! Those clouds full of hail
Predict to me that Jupiter
Is vexed by me

Here comes the lightning
Do you hear doing battle
The belly of a cloud?
I saw, I saw ! I saw the fire,
I saw the thunderstorm and the thunder
Smashes me against the earth, all dead

²young goat


All poems written by Ronsard