Jacques Brel - The song of the old lovers

Original Title: "La chanson des vieux amants"
Year: 1967

Of course, there were storms
After twenty years of love, it's crazy love
A thousand times, you packed your bags
A thousand times, I took off
And every piece of furniture remembers,
In this bedroom without a cradle,
The screams of old tempests
Nothing resembled to anything no more
You had lost the taste for water
And me, the one of conquest

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

I, I know all your spells
You know all my bewitchments
You kept me from trap to trap
I have lost you time to time
Of course you took a few lovers
The time had well to be spent
The body well has to exult
But finally, finally
It required us quite a lot of talent
To be old without being adult

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

And more time makes a procession for us
And more time gives us torment
But isn't it the worst trap
To live in peace for lovers?
Of course you cry a bit less early
I tear myself up a bit later
We protect our mysteries less
We are less confident in luck
We are wary of the current
But it's still the tender war

But my love
My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love
From the clear dawn until the end of the day
I love you still, you know, I love you

Yves Jamait - I happened to be passing by

Original Title: "Je passais par hasard"
Year: 2008

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships
which found the hopes
of a "it's possible as a couple"

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships
which found the hopes
of a "it's possible as a couple"

And I found charming,
Ideal and impressive
To see you in love
Even though every now and then
it was almost bloody²
to feel you both happy

It's in that spirit
That I went through the doorstep
Of that pretty house
born from a nuptial desire
But there, I remain silent
Dumbfounded on the reef
that breaks passion into conjugal horror

Here we are both
Overwhelmed with silence
I look in vain for the words
that could carry you
Erase all those bruises
In short, words that dress the wounds
And slip on your skin with terrorised edges

My hands of shameful male
are terrified to touch you
I approach anyway
and take you in my arms
You flee in the hollow of my neck to cry
You say "It's the umpteenth time that he does this to me"

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships
which found the hopes
of a "it's possible as a couple"

And I found charming,
Ideal and impressive
To see you in love
Even though every now and then
it was almost bloody
to feel you both happy

And it's been a while already
That he gives you a thrashing
When he is persuaded
That you pick up in passing
And his insane look
makes you scared to death
When he comes to relieve
With his fists his rage

If his fists aren't enough
He strikes with his feet
When fallen on the ground
like an inert beast
You hide with your arms
Your swollen face
Then the blow of the shoe
Is only more agile
Then the blow of the shoe
Is only more agile

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships
which found the hopes
of a "it's possible as a couple"

And I found charming,
Ideal and impressive
To see you in love
Even though every now and then
it was almost bloody
to feel you both happy

I do not recognise
Through that bastard
The one I used to love
Whom today I loathe
He wasn't like that
Well I am not sure anymore
One must have been so before
To be that rotten

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships
which found the hopes
of a "it's possible as a couple"

Come, I only have my tenderness
Come, Come, Come
Here against me
Come, And for all this to end
Come, I take you away with me.

I happened to be passing by
I was passing by to see you
To find back a little
of those rare friendships

²very boring

Jacques Bertin - Landscape

Original Title: "Paysage"
Year: 1993

We won't go further together apparently
We love each others so well, though, and it is futile
This separtion; the water of the Loire as well
Divide itself, further, having left islands.
Sorry, with their weight of dead wood toward oblivion,

Like major arguments swollen with boredom.
The river with forms more subtle from memory
Joins and of a new appetite to drink itself.
We will find each other again, I believe.
For you the doubt was stronger and the pain for a while shook you
You were right, then you are wrong. I dread
Less the future than those few memories.
There is the valley after the swirls, the slow waters.

The river takes there the form of an open hand.
In the grass and what's left of the violent hours
That's it: the giving up, the stream, the path
Untied or like two bodies united in a bed,
The writing of a simple word. Everything gathers us.

Then again this crazy joy of being together.
I take again the herbarium of the dazzled smiles.
You do not believe in it, you say "Too late", you say "Never"
I will keep quiet, I am patient like the river
Yesterday, tomorow, for me everything moves alltogether
The hope is the water itself; I love you, I loved you.
I will love you, I love you. What do I have left?
Except this large passion donning the plain.
This stubborn song that goes up in your breath
To the erected wall of stilled time, throwing challenges.
Around the setting sun the perspective wings.
In the bottoms of the painting where glides the years.
The parallels far away in the infinite joins.
And for ever; we can't miss one another.

Barbara - Because (I love you)

Original Title: "Parce que (je t'aime)"
Year: 1967

It's because your shoulder to my shoulder
Your mouth to my hair
And your hand on my neck,
It's because on my waist,
When your breath brushes against me
It's because your hands,
It's because cheek to cheek,
It's because in the morning,
It's because at night,
When you say "come", I come
You smile, I smile.
It's because here or there,
In another country,
As long as you are there,
It is always my country,
It's because I love you
That I prefer to go away.
It's better, much better, to leave one another
Before dies the time to love.

It's because I fear to see plunge into grief
the minutes, the hours, the seconds passed,
It's because I know that there needs an almost nothing
To undo one night and be lost in the morning.
I won't let leaning over our bed
Nor the shadow of a regret, nor the shadow of a boredom.
I won't let die with the passing days
What was you and me, what was our love.
It will never be carried away by time,
I carry it away myself. It will remain alive.

Oh leave me alone, yes I love you.
But I prefer to go away.
Because one has to be able to part
Before dies the time to love.

I have seen some, like us, who were going with slow steps
And carried their love like ones carries a child.
I have seen some, like us, who were going with slow steps
And fell on their knees, in the declining evening.
I found them back, furious and fighting
Like two wounded wolves. What are they now?

That, I do not want. I love you.
I do not want to tear ourselves up
It's better, believe me, to part
Before dies the time to love.
It's better, much better, to part
Before dies the time to love...

Jean Ferrat - Aragon - The poets

Original Title: "Les poètes"
Text: Louis Aragon

Year: 1969

I do not know what possesses me
And pushes me to say out loud,
Nor for the pity nor for the help
Nor like one would confess one's faults,
What inhabits me and what obsesses me
What inhabits me and what obsesses me

The one who sings tortures himself
Which shouts in me, which animal
I kill or which creature,
In the name of good in the name of evil,
Only know those who remained silent.
Only know those who remained silent.

Machado sleeps in Collioure
Three steps were enough out of Spain
For the sky for him to become heavy
He sat in this countryside
And closed his eyes for ever
And closed his eyes for ever

Above the waters and the plains
Above the roofs of the hills
A plainchant rises at the top of the voice²
Is it toward the star Hölderlin?
Is it toward the star Verlaine?
Is it toward the star Verlaine?

Marlowe you need the tavern
Not for Faust but to die there
Between the killers surrounding you
with their daggers and their laughs
By the glimmer of a lantern.
By the glimmer of a lantern.

Stars, dusts of flames,
In august which fall on the ground
All the sky, this night, proclaims
The slaughter of the nightingales
But what does the universe know of the tragedy.
But what does the universe know of the tragedy.

The suffering gives birth to the dreams
Like a hive its bees
The man shouts where his iron gnaws him
And his wound fathers a sun
More beautiful than the ancient lies.
More beautiful than the ancient lies.

I do not know what possesses me
And pushes me to say out loud,
Nor for the pity nor for the help
Nor like one would confess one's faults,
What inhabits me and what obsesses me
What inhabits me and what obsesses me

²at full throat
All poems written by Louis Aragon

Jacques Brel - The Bourgeois

Original Title: "Les Bourgeois"
Year: 1962

The heart well in the warm
The eyes in the beer
At the fat Adrienne from Montalant
With friend Jojo
And with friend Peter*
We were going to drink our twenty years old
Jojo took himself for Voltaire
And Peter for Casanova
And me, I who was the proudest
Me, I took myself for myself
And when around midnight were passing the notaries
who were coming out of the "Three pheasant" Hotel
We showed them our ass and our good manners
By singing to them:

"The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become stupid²
The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become ...

The heart well in the warm
The eyes in the beer
At the fat Adrienne from Montalant
With friend Jojo
And with friend Peter
We were going to burn our twenties
Voltaire was dancing like a curate
And Casanova didn't dare
And me, I who remained the proudest
Me, I was almost as drunk as myself
And when around midnight were passing the notaries
who were coming out of the "Three Pheasant" Hotel
We showed them our ass and our good manners
By singing to them:

"The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become stupid
The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become ...

The heart at rest
The eyes well down to earth
At the bar of the "Three Pheasants" Hotel
With Mister Jojo
And with Master Peter
Between notaries we were passing time
Jojo speaks about Voltaire
And Peter about Casanova
And me, I who had remained the proudest
Me, I still talk about myself
And it's when going out around midnight, Mister the superintendent
That every evening from the Montalant
Young "yobs" are showing us their behinds
While singing to us
"The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become stupid
do they say Mister the superintendent
The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, more they become ..."

*translated Pierre to Peter and L'hôtel "Des trois faisans" to "Three Pheasants" Hotel

²The paragraph should be
"Older they become, dumber they become
The bourgeois they are like pigs
Older they get, ...they become"
I switched the order to a less grammatically correct sentence to show that there was something left hanging in the song
The ... could be replaced by a more offensive word than stupid/idiot. (in French the rhyme suggests "cons")

Barbara - Perlimpinpin

Year: 1972

For whom, how, when and why?
Against whom? How? Against what?
Enough with your violences.

Where do you come from?
Where are you going?
Who are you?
Who do you pray?
I ask you to be silent.

For whom, how, when and why?
If it's absolutely necessary for us to be
Against someone or something.

I am for the setting sun
At the top of the deserted hills.
I am for the deep forests.

Because a child who cries,
No matter where he is from,
Is a child who cries.
Because a child who dies,
At the end of your rifles,
Is a child who dies.

How appalling it is to have to choose
Between two innocences.
How appalling it's to have for enemies
The laughs of childhood!

For whom, how, when and how much?
Against whom? How and how much?
To the point of losing the taste of living

The taste of water, the taste of bread
And the one of the Perlimpinpin²
In the Square des Batignolles

But for nothing, but for almost nothing,
To be with you and that's fine!
And for an half-open rose,

And for a breathing,
And for a breeze of abandon,
And for a shivering garden!

Having nothing, but passionately,
Frantically not saying anything to one another
But give everything ecstatically

And wealthy with deprivation
Only have one's own truth,
Own all the wealths.

Not speaking of poetry
While trampling down wild flowers.
And invoke transparence,
At the back of a yard with grey walls
Where dawn never stands a chance.

Against whom, how, against what?
For whom, how, when and why?
To find back the taste of living,

The taste of water, the taste of bread
And the one of Perlimpinin
In the Square des Batignolles

Against noone and against nothing,
But for all the open flowers,
But for a breathing,
But for a breeze of abandon
And for that shivering garden!

And to live passionately
And to fight only
with the fires of the tenderness

And wealthy with deprivation
Only have one's own truth,
Own all the wealths

Not speaking of poetry anymore
But let the wild flowers live

And invoke transparence
At the back of a yard with grey walls
Where dawn would finally stand a chance

To live,
To live,

And to live passionately
And fight only
with the fires of the tenderness

And wealthy with deprivation
Only have one's own truth
Own all the wealths

Nothing else but tenderness as only wealth

And to give,
But to give,
ecstatically!

To live,
To live,
With tenderness,
To live,
To live,
ecstatically!

Nothing else but tenderness as only wealth

And to give,
But to give,
ecstatically!

²Perlimpinpin powder is alike to "Snake Oil".
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