A keresés eredménye

Secret love

Dance with me
Dance with me
Night covers us like a sheet
Nobody will see you here,
entrapped in my arms.
 
Play with me
Play with me
I'm the mouse, you're the cat.
Do whatever you please with me.
As the song goes, it'll be alright1
 
And what if secret love
was indeed true love?
No living witnesses,
only trees and wind.
 
When hidden love(rs)
can't get close, doesn't that
make vows written in chalk
even truer?2
 
And what if secret love
was indeed true love?
No living witnesses,
only trees and wind.
 
Dance with me
Dance with me
What we're doing together is neither the business
of narrow-minded persons3 or the law
This fight is ours alone4
 
Carry me away
Carry me away
Just like in the delta of a river,
what is me
and what is you
mix up but don't unite5
 
And what if secret love
was indeed true love?
No living witnesses,
only trees and wind.
 
When hidden love(rs)
can't get close, doesn't that
make vows written in chalk
even truer?
 
And what if secret love...
 
When hidden love(rs)
can't get close, doesn't that
make vows written in chalk
even truer?
 
And what if secret love
was indeed true love?
No living witnesses,
only trees and wind.
 

• 1. that's a rather anachronic pun. 'ça ira' means 'it'll be alright' in modern French, but the he refers to rather says 'That will happen for sure, all the aristocrats will be hung'
• 2. that's arguably nice-looking gibberish in French too
• 3. 'bien-pensant' is also a trendy modern term, it really sounds out of place in a 18th century story
• 4. what fight? Are they making love or war?
• 5. another bit of abstruse French

You think of her

You think of her
better1 than of the comeback of the swallows
You think of her
like a priest to his parish
You think of her
like a dog in front of its bowl.
You think of her
 
Speak no more.
I recall her yesterday morning
Speak no more,
or beauty is worthless2
Speak no more.
I can hear horses in the dist3
Speak no more.
 
She will make you
swear Judas' oath.
She will carry you
all around the world in her arms.
She will leave you
on the corner of a bed, your heart spread-eagled4.
She will forget about you.
 
Speak no more.
Love is killing me in this garden.
Speak no more.
Living without her is a grief.
Speak no more.
Dying every day
is my fate.
Speak no more.
 
You think of her
 
I recall her yesterday morning
Speak no more (you think of her)
or beauty is worthless (you think of her)
I can hear horses in the distance
Speak no more (you think of her)
 
Speak no more.
Love is killing me in this garden (she will forget about you).
Speak no more.
Living without her is a grief (she will forget about you).
Speak no more.
Dying every day (she will forget about you)
is my fate.
 
She will forget about you.
 
Speak no more.
 
You think of her.
 

• 1. sounds odd in French too
• 2. ??? as if speaking would make beauty worthless ???
• 3. ...ance. 'loin' is an adjective meaning 'far'. Correct French would use the noun 'lointain' (far distance)
• 4. 'en croix' is usually said of the arms forming a cross with the body, equivalent to the spread-eagle posture. It could also evoke a crucified heart, with an effort of imagination

Terror, citizen

Terror1, citizen
I can see it dance in your hands
I can feel it clearly, going along
with all these heads in your basket.
 
Terror, citizen,
I can see it coming tomorrow,
along with the taste of others' blood.
Who's next? Who's to blame?
 
Terror, citizen,
from the Vendée2 to Saint Germain3
I can see it being thrown like a stone
by Robespierre's hand.
 
Terror
Terror
Terror, citizen
 
Terror, citizen
I stand alongside it every morning,
in the eyes of the temple child4
they locked up to make an example.
 
Terror, citizen,
that's where it comes from. It came a long way.
It can put me on its list,
even though I'm no royalist.
 
Terror, citizen,
from the Montagnards to the Girondins5,
torn apart by a convention
that is no longer the revolution.
 
Terror
Terror
Terror, citizen
 
Oh, oh, Terror
Terror
Terror,
it's such an error, citizen.
 
Oh, oh, Terror
Terror
Terror,
it's such an error, citizen.
 
Terror is such an error, citizen.
 

• 1. 'la Terreur' is the name of a period after French revolution when many members of the nobility and alleged royalists were summarily executed, using the infamous guillotine
• 2. a region of France where a bloody civil war erupted after the revolution
• 3. I don't recall the city played any significant role during the revolution. Maybe an allusion to the ?
• 4. It's about Louis XVII, infant heir to the throne, detained in the Temple prison where he would die in 1795
• 5. the two main political factions in the newly formed parliament which was called the 'convention'. Many of its members would meet their end to the guillotine during the ferocious political struggles that followed the revolution

France

With its villages and castles,
its grey houses by the waterside,
I know very well what people do there1.
 
With its fears and angers,
its revolutionary ideas,
I know it better than you'd think.
 
With its belfries and churches
and customs. Whatever they say,
it still harbours a desire for insolence2
 
Though I might have offended it at some point,
it is like an heartache
that makes me quietly cry.
 
France, France
is like the shadow of a cross under Provence's sky.
France
is keeping faith while all bets are off3.
 
With its romantic gardens4,
its fishing harbours on the Atlantic,
I know its diversity5.
 
With all its craftsman trades,
stonecutters or peasants,
it's been moving forth for 2000 years.
 
With its immortal provinces,
the cherished child of the Sun King6
I know his descendants well.
 
With its words of liberty,
equality, fraternity
which never occurred to me.
 
France, France
is to believe until the end, until the last chance.
France
is to keep our childhood memories inside of us7
 
France, France,
it remains my country, from yesterday to today.
France,
with all its colours, remains in my heart.
 

• 1. lit. 'the way they dance there', but the idea is rather 'what's going on there'
• 2. that sounds pretty bad in French too, like corporate or media waffle
• 3. more precisely: when the result is inevitable
• 4. actually the 'romantic' movement didn't exist at the time, it was an invention of the triumphant bourgeois social class that would bloom in the mid-19th century
• 5. 'différence' is a trendy politically correct word for 'diversity'
• 6. a common nickname for Louis XIV, a most prestigious king of France who ruled with great pomp for 70 years until early 18th century
• 7. what a lot of hot air...

Disenchantment

We dreamed so much of being free,
of being free
before we became rebels.
 
We dreamed so much of being immobile1,
of being immobile
before we became emigrants.
 
We all loved the same France,
the same childhood,
before we made mistakes.
 
It wavers at the end of courage
on the flag of the revolutions.
It has made nobody dream,
the disenchantment.
It dwells in the hearts of men,
as the bereavement of their imagination.
It spared no one,
the disenchantment.
 
We always dreamed of always following
of always following
a wind of liberty.
 
We dreamed so much of writing the book
of writing the book
of a forgotten story.
 
We fought
for offences,
for differences2
that brought us closer.
 
It wavers at the end of courage
on the flag of the revolutions.
It has made nobody dream,
the disenchantment.
It dwells in the hearts of men,
as the bereavement of their imagination.
It spared no one,
the disenchantment.
 
This dagger in the heart
that dares not speak its name3
and kills happiness
by saying 'no' to you.
 
It wavers at the end of courage
on the flag of the revolutions.
It has made nobody dream,
the disenchantment.
It dwells in the hearts of men,
as the bereavement of their imagination.
It spared no one,
the disenchantment. (x3)
 

• 1. being immobile is not really something people dream of, for all I know. No idea what he means by that
• 2. again this PC synonym of 'diversity'. It doesn't really mean anything here
• 3. another cliché for 'hidden' or 'covert' or 'deceptive' that has no real meaning here

Marie-Antoinette

She holds the last king of France
stubbornly1 to her heart2.
She says again how much she loves him,
and that he has to survive her absence
and harbour no thought of revenge.
And her guards already drag her away.
 
She would want to leave it up to God,
but where is God right now?
She says: 'you can cut my hair,
but please take care of my child'
 
She walks obediently,
remembering the dance steps
in her queenly finery.
She retained that elegance
that would grant the court of France
its European insolence.
 
She hears the shouts of the crowd
and the insults of the innocents3
She hears the drums rolling
and the belfry of St Vincent.
 
Soldiers, hats off.
The queen walks to the scaffold.
Soldiers, this is one death too many.
Which republic is without its faults?
 
She thinks of the former king of France,
of her nice childhood years
in an Austrian province.
And, as the cart comes forth,
she takes her allotted place
next to a Gypsy girl4
 
She would want to leave it up to God,
but God is never where He should be.
She refuses to lower her eyes
in front of the executioner's hood5.
 
Soldiers, hats off.
The queen walks to the scaffold.
Soldiers, this is one death too many.
Which republic is without its faults?
 
She no longer knows what she's thinking about.
Everything changes dramatically6 as something obvious7
She seems to hear the noise of chains,
and in a silent whisper,
deep inside everyone's consciousnesses
everybody wonders: 'why the queen?'8
 

• 1. lit. 'insistently', but that doesn't really make sense in French either
• 2. it's about Louis XVII, a 8 years old child who would eventually die in prison two years later.
• 3. ??? sounds like 'innocent' is meant as 'feeble-minded' here. Or maybe the people that are not to blame for her execution?
• 4. I suppose that's a wink to Esmeralda, though I wonder what Notre-Dame de Paris has to do with the French revolution. In reality she was accompanied by a priest.
• 5. this is purely apocryphal. As the story goes, she inadvertently stepped on the executioner's toes and her last words were 'I beg your pardon, Mister. I did not do it on purpose'
• 6. the verb also means 'topple over'. It's obviously a kind of play on both meanings. Not a very good one, in my opinion.
• 7. I don't know what they mean by that
• 8. Though the crowd indeed remained silent after her death, Marie-Antoinette was a symbol of all that was wrong with the nobility. Living in an indecent luxury, oblivious to the needs of her people, playing the shepherdess with her courtesans while children starved in the streets around her palace. I very doubt many commoners questioned the reasons for her execution.