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Translation
Paris May
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
The helmet of the cobblestones does not move a lash any more
The Seine again flows with blessed water
The wind scattered the ashes of Bendit
And everyone has gone home at his car
I found again my pace on the clean-shaven bitumen
The pace of a bird-convict chained to his feather
And pickaxing the evasion of a Titan nightingale
Capable of performing the Rite of Spring
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
These days, I confess it, I have an acrid taste in the throat
The Rite of Spring sounds like a massacre
But each coming day will embellish my cry
I may as well be incubating an Igor Stravinsky
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
And I take you Paris in my arms full of zeal
On my chest I press your gemstones
I drop off the dawn on the Tuileries
Like roses on the bed of a damsel
At noon I fly over your six million dudes
Your down-to-sick life dashes to my guts
I swallow your pigeon-coloured districts
White intelligence and grey religion
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
I spot in passing Hugo in the Sorbonne
and the smell of eau de vie of the old demijohn
At the edges of evening, half-godsend, half-beggar,
I plunge to a bridge where leans a student
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
The exhausted young man ripped off his hair
The dishevelled young man tore his shirt up
"Comrade, is my skin still appropriate
and inside is not my lone heart old fashioned ?
With my fair girlfriend when we dance together
Are we the ones who dance or is it the earth shaking ?
I do not want any more to spit in dad's face
I want to know if Man is right or not
if I have to assume this narrow sentry box
with its left wing, with its right wing,
Its pale orations, its crimson hymns,
its passion for future, its chronic amnesia"
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
Thus spoke without a word this young man
Between the old river and the new river
Where the drown men swim in their cars
Thus, without a word, spoke this young man
And I the bird-convict, eater of bitter snacks
To my inner sky I plunged again my way
The long tunnel grumbling on the back of its walls
Sucked in the very end through an azure neck
There glint Peace, the meeting of the poles
and the sword of spring blessing our shoulder
Do chirp, chaffinches, till you lift the day
And us let us grate, drawbridges of Love !
May May May Paris May
May May May Paris
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Collections with "Paris mai"
1. | Songs about Paris Vol. 1 |
Claude Nougaro: Top 3
1. | Tu verras |
2. | Ô Toulouse |
3. | Cécile, ma fille. |
Comments
About translator
This is one of Nougaro's most famous songs in France, describing in a very energetic and poetic way the atmosphere in Paris during and shortly after the protestations of the students in May 1968.
Bendit : an allusion to Daniel Cohn-Bendit, French left-wing ecologist politician. He was not killed at all during the protests, but the government and right-wing politicians did hate him. Nougaro imagines here that Bendit has been reduced to ashes after the end of the protestations.
Chacun est rentré chez son automobile : this is a deliberate solecism in French : the preposition "chez" (here is like "at" when you say "to go at someone's") lets us wait for the usual expression "rentrer chez soi" (to go home) but Nougaro says "rentré chez son automobile". I translated by using wrongly the preposition "at".