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Translation
Jeanne
At Jeanne’s home, Jeanne,
her inn is open to homeless people,
you could call it the inn of the Good God
if there wasn’t already one of them,
the last where one can go in
Without knocking, without showing any credentials1...
At Jeanne’s home, Jeanne,
I doesn’t matter who are, nor when you come,
and as if miraculously, magically,
you become part of the family
in her heart, with a bit of moving over,
There is still a bit of room...
Jeanne, Jeanne,
She is poor and her table often has not much food
but the little that you find there is enough to satisy2,
through the way that she gives it,
her bread resembles cake
and her water wine like two peas in a pod3
Jeanne, Jeanne,
You pay when you can the fabtastic prices:
A kiss on her forhead or one her white hair,
Something like a guitar chord
the address of a frightened4 cat
or of a dog covered in mud as a tip...
Jeanne, Jeanne
In her roses and her cabbages hasn’t found a child
To be loved and defended against the four winds,
and to be held against her breast,
and to to be nourished with her milk...
People other than her would all be very despondent about that...
But Jeanne, Jeanne,
is no more bothered by that than by utter trivia5
to be mother to three sucklings, what’s the point !
when she is a universal mother,
when all the children or the earth,
Of the sea and of they sky are hers...
- 1. lit: showing a white paw
- 2. lit: satisfies for life
- 3. lit:two drops of water
- 4. lit: scalded
- 5. "les colins-tampon" (the Nickie drummers) was the name given by he French, after the battle of Marignano (modern Melegnano; the French - who won the battle - called it Marignan) in 1515, to the battery of drummers that formed part of the Swiss army (the losers) at that battle; those drummers were of course people who were no use as infantry, they were assigned to the drum battery because they knew neither which end of a horse was the front nor which end of a sword was the handle, nor even which end of a pike was the pointy one, and (mostly being rather young boys) probably couldn't carry a pike anyway, and only ever drummed the right signals because the NCOs had taught them - the cruel way - that they would suffer when they got it wrong, but they still got it wrong almost as often as not. So it wasn't worth the French army's time to take any notice of them. So the name for just one of them came to mean "something absolutely, utterly, indisputably, totally not worth bothering about". Often translated as "a rat's arse".
michealt✕
Collections with "Jeanne"
| 1. | Prénoms (First names) Partie III : G-J |
Georges Brassens: Top 3
| 1. | Je me suis fait tout petit |
| 2. | Les passantes |
| 3. | La mauvaise réputation |
Idioms from "Jeanne"
| 1. | Like two peas in a pod |
| 2. | montrer patte blanche |
| 3. | sans feu ni lieu |
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