Saturday, December 20, 2014

Jacques Bertin - Novel


Original Title: "Roman"
Year: 1972
He was coming down the mountain and the silence and in front of him men
Up there he was alone; one cannot hear anything but the wind
He was coming down, in his head he was looking for the implacable word
That would bind him to the world, to men and to himself for ever

Toward him you were moving forward barded with objects, small, puny,
History closed on you like a wicket that is being brought down
We were only saying a few words, only a few words, always the same ones
You didn't know who you were, earth was rolling under your steps

He was coming down, you told him, "You come, your are one of us"
You told him "You are a part of ourselves", he didn't like you
He was young, he was looking for God, he was only looking for the word
Like a broad and luminious belly where everything is getting calm and the wind falls down

But he was gliding toward you and he smelled the smell of men
He felt himself sinking, he didn't like you
You were holding your hands out to him, the hands gnawed, the bones: look!
He saw that he had the same hands, the same death stuck at the fingertips

He heard your complaint about the city and it was coming out of his mouth
He saw you the throat slit in the gullies of Algeria
He heard his own groan that was going up from the metro Charonne
In the Vercors he was getting up with the shadows beating the air on the crosses

Near Chateaubriant in the hedges the executed soldiers sing
At night in the suburbs the posters peel to the wind
It's always the same words on the ground simply asking to be picked up
And to be carried from hand to hand, most of all that we do not forget

The same words always at night, alike and the day before
The same song, the same groan, not much, hurt words
May it be that we haven't lived for nothing. It's simple
And that song will last like Earth will.

The enemy is stronger than ever now that our song is weak
The same words come from Billancourt, from Prague and from Madrid
It's always the time to put up barricades of words
It's always today that we have to defend that inferno there

A woman was passing with in the eyes the same tear
The same crushed dream at the bottom of the eyes. They recognized each other’s
A few moments and a door that is being closed already
Without lying he had had the time to tell her he loved her

He was betting every moment, he was talking of present things
He was of every fight systematically
He had no hope, no future, he was drunk
He was standing in History like the stopped sob of a child.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Jacques Bertin - Lovers


Original Title: "Amants"
Year: 1967
Lovers who glide in the streets, the passer-bys are like a cloud
Lovers all bathed in tenderness
Who land on our sidewalks before the start of the seasons
And who flap while pecking the sorry bread of the low autumns avenues
Are making a dream journey after their wedding at the poplar trees
Toward countries of winds and seaweeds where the seasons would stop

I know that the seasons stop at the first look of the lovers
I know that I will see there all my scandals over death and the living
dissolve with our twenties
I know that lumps, droppings and white marble
Entire lives have been seen there be dissolved into sand and wind
That sparrows burnt to a cinder have been seen revived there
And that dungeons have been seen there letting themselves be converted into moss
That as many fires of blond heads are being lit at the eyes of the Saint-Jean

I know that seasons stop between the lips of the lovers
I know that here is a pond where drowning is deliverance
And that it's well the only pond where which bottom isn't looked for
That only drowning is expected from it at the beginning of God and time
Because everything becomes eternity and every moment becomes vapour
Inflexible grass, air and grape, words hang on to nothing
And of our wet flight immensely the words are amazed
Grass, woman, flesh and grape, the words mean nothing no more
Our eyes do not mean anything no more and everything merges and everything is vain

Then the sun regains his good and proud place
Like he was at the first morning
I know that the seasons start
And him, the poor, the recovered, him I hear him whisper
Cry of joy my vivacious, my daffodil by that look that was calling me,
You know, you resuscitated me, my old canal flew out
The world becomes certain to me and me, I become tribune
And there is lightness in the air

Lovers flapping in the streets, the time won.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Jacques Brel - Tomorrow we are getting married


Original Title: "Demain l'on se marie"
Year: 1958
Female singer for the chorus: Janine de Waleyne
As we get married tomorrow
Let's learn the same song
As life opens tomorrow
Tell me what we will sing

We will force love
To rock our life
Of a pretty song
That we will sing together

We will force love
If you want my beloved
To only be of our life
nothing but the humble smith

As we get married tomorrow
Let's learn the same song
As life opens tomorrow
Tell me what we will see there

We will force our eyes
To see nothing else
but the pretty thing
That lives in every thing

We will force our eyes
To be nothing else but one hope
That we will both offer
Like one offers a rose

As we get married tomorrow
Let's learn the same song
As life opens tomorrow
Tell me again where we will go

We will force the doors
Of the Oriental countries
To open in front of us
In front of our smile

We will force, my beloved
The smile of the people
To be never be again
A joy that sighs

As we get married tomorrow
Let's open the door to those songs
As we get married tomorrow
Let's learn the same song

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Jacques Bertin - Words and colors

Original Title: "Les Mots et les Couleurs"
Year: 1968
I go fishing the bleak in the holes of Loire
I do not stop. I am at Montaigu
I am looking for the lost handkerchief
Of my grand mother.

The rain gives its languidness back to the golden beach
A wedding goes down to Saint-Paul by the strands
It's midnight, the moor is full of rabbits sat in circle
Around a very pale korrigan who speaks about death and sailors

I hunt the heather and the thyme in Sologne
Fascinated by the water that boils in the marshes
I run after the trains that roam on the moor
I look for the tracks of the basque hermit
Who let the horses pass the border

France, that sea where I sail as I like
Alone facing the wind and the silence in me
Around me laying down
Like a long white dog raised with an order
I rock the sleep of the pounds
The secret in the hidden yards
The capital of the good Lord lost in the eyes of our women
The wet sun of the mornings where a drown girl sinks

The world is a weird kingdom
Which mad prince is curious.
It's an old prince without children
Who wanders and struts about
In a long curtain grey and red.
So I go like the wind
I go along grey boardings
Look for the sun of the children

I do not know anything about myself,
about the world that is calling me
I bring the wide open words
Of my roads, of my insanities
Here and there the burnt words in the gazes
Spread on the brown tables.
The flesh, the blood, the juice and that animal world.

The words run under the things
Pubescent, warm, sweaty and vermilion
Runing along the trains, along the roads.
The words hung to the trees
and going through the hedges
Unknown, whispered, noticed, guessed,
And those that cracks in the morning

When floats some marine songs
Linen of women under the sun
Sitting on the embankments,
the words and the hanging legs
And that many-coloured universe
that is looking for its female
and doesn't know why.
I leave, I only like the words and the colors.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Malicorne - The Deserter - The Leave


Traditional song
Original Title: "Le Congé (Le Déserteur)"
Year: 1977
It's been eight years that I am in the army
Without ever having receveid my leave
It's been eight years I am in the army
Without ever having received my leave

The desire took hold of me
to come back to the country without leave
to come back to the country without leave

On my way, made a sad encounter
Three grenadiers captured me and took me away
On my way, made a sad meeting
Three grenadiers captured me and took me away

Have attached my handcuffs nastily
Right to Bordeaux in prison lead me
Right to Bordeaux in prison lead me

Ah, does one have for the love of a brunette
To be reduced to those cursed dungeons!
Ah, does one have for the love of a brunette
To be reduced to those cursed dungeons!

To be reduced to sleeping on straw
To eat black bread and drink nothing else but water
To eat black bread and drink nothing else but water

But when the beauty heard those words
But nights and days goes find her lover
But when the beauty heard those words
But nights and days goes find her lover

Telling him "My lover, take courage"
She will save you, the one who loves you so much
She will save you, the one who loves you so much

I will go talk, to your Captain
Your captain, your commandant as well
I will go talk, to your Captain
Your captain, your commandant as well

While telling them to soften your sentence
For some money, give me back my lover
For some money, give me back my lover

Keep, beauty, your gold and your money
To make war have it at their leisure
Keep, beauty, your gold and your money
To make war have it at their leasure

I have to be court-martialled
And then after, I'll be put to death
And then after, I'll be put to death

The one who will kill me, it'll be my comrade
The one who will kill me, it'll be my comrade
He will blindfold me with a blue handkerchief
He will make me die without making me suffer too much

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Jacques Bertin - Very far, offered, perfumed


Original Title: "Très loin, offerte, parfumée"
Year: 1970
Very far, offered, perfumed
And in the loop of the dews
A spilled orangeade

Came, came her foot putting down
Unlaced, perfumed, dreaming
The hand holding a pebble

That one, wet grain, face
And among, always rising up
The bycicles of sun

She, every step laying,
Opened and you are like
The grass avenues of the sea

Monday, December 1, 2014

Léo Ferré - Arthur Rimbaud - The Crows


Original Title: "Les Corbeaux"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud
Year: 1964
Lord, when the meadow is cold,
When in the knocked down hamlets,
The lengthy angelus went quiet...
on the nature which flowers were shed
Have swoop down from the big skies
The dear delicious crows
The dear delicious crows

Strange army with severe shouts
The cold winds attack your nests!
You, along the yellowed rivers,
On the roads with old ordeals
On the ditches and, on the holes.
Disperse! Rally!
Disperse! Rally!

By the thousands, on the fields of France,
Where dead people of the day before yesterday are asleep
Circle, won't you, during the winter,
So that every passer-by think again!
Be then the crier of duty,
Oh our funereal black bird!
Oh our funereal black bird!

But, saints of the sky, on top of the oak tree,
Lost mast in the charmed evening,
Leave the warblers of May
To those who are chained deep in the woods
In the grass from where none can flee,
The defeat without future
The defeat without future

Léo Ferré - You never say anything

Original Title: " Tu ne dis jamais rien " Year: 1971 I see the world a bit like one sees the unbelievable This what the unbeli...