Fin des mondes [English translation]

Some debts for the nations

The smiles of money.

On the platforms

of exhausted cities

you're looking for some dough

to afford

a life on credit.

Your heart is burried in sooth.

Bleak plain1.

No, it's not Waterloo,

it's the subway platforms.

Yeah, it's the chain

of the subscriptions to stuff.

You saw what that does

to people. Plain shit

for springs without roses.

They can sell my prose all they want,

fuck them.

A few master bankers

for millions of drowned men

in the subways,

all these people harbouring dreams,

these people who don't lift

anything but the crosses on their backs.

To live, you got to pay

To love each other, you got to pay

To die, you got to pay

And then you need insurances too,

to properly feed the paunch,

speculations over sufferings.

Well, let them all die like dogs,

since they come for more back-bending

Here, even hope

must taste, surely,

like the reign of the machines.

If this is the end of the worlds,

if this is hell,

if your heart is falling

down in the dirt2,

if dreams are dying,

if everything is dust.

You know it, who awaits us

when we die: worms.

If you're not outraged

to see our lands

still used as wheat fields,

the culture of destitutions3 ?

Subway platforms4, I see ships.

Tell me, how can we dry our sobs5?

Breaking out at daybreak

for (the sake of) our loves along the waves

of the ships on the wheat fields.

I hear mankind screaming.

Come on, let's have a beer

to make our overdrafts skyrocket.

the finger to their Dow Jones6,

these universes deep inside the cracks7

I fuck Wall Street and the rest of them,

so-called God, money, all the apostoles.

We sell our happiness on credit,

Business experts in nightclubs8

since our flesh is auctionned

and we fucked the Earth.

This is war, my love (x3)

To the waves sweeping whole countries away

To the big bosses of the total corruption

To my love in her shopping cart9

To the ones fired into the fire10

To the gang-bang of cultures

To the nuclear (waste) spreading everywhere11

To the sons of country cements12

To our kids, to our partners

To the ones that are left on the side of the road

To the wounded from the stock exchange rates

rocked by unemployed and enclaves13

To our love stories in basements

To the dictatorships of our networks.

Your shitty life on pictures

To the politicians willing to get fucked in the ass

Work more, work more14

To the dancing people, poor morons

Everyone with a hard on for dough,

for the financial tyrants,

for some jokers pulling the strings,

Uncle Tom speakers,

transactions that taste of blood.

We'll have to cut their balls off,

too bad if blood flows,

that will allow us to grow flowers

Who knows? The future might be brighter

No matter if we have to destroy everything,

if we have to rebuild the Earth

Comrade banker, you can die,

me, I'll piss on your grave

and make love to my sweetheart on it.

Fuck you Goldman Sachs! Fuck you!

This is war, my love

1. from the famous Victor Hugos's poem "Waterloo, Waterloo, bleak plain"2. "tomber plus bas que terre" (to fall lower than ground) is idiomatic for the worst kind of degradation or humiliation3. "blé" (wheat) is one of the many slang names of "money", so the idea is that land is sold for profit. "culture" can both mean "culture" and "cultivation", so it could be read - with a bit of a stretch - as "our culture promotes destitution" and "people are farmed for money like wheat on an industrial field"4. "quai" can mean both "platform" and "embankment/wharf"5. French sobs are no more dryable than English ones, but let's call that a metonymy6. The CAC40 is the main French stock exchange indicator7. "fente" could refer to an ATM/vending machine or a vulva. Saez used this metaphor a couple of times, here for instance8. Saez is using his pet word "aux" again, which can mean so many things that the actual meaning has to be guessed9. allusion to the cover of J'accuse10. the pun is accidental!11. "dans la nature" is idiomatic for "anywhere (without control)"12. probably an allusion to the countryside being turned into concrete and asphalt-covered suburbs, tough I find the metaphor a bit stretched13. "au gré" means something like "on the whim of" here. It can be interpreted loosely as "victims of speculation become unemployed and end up in ghettos"14. 10 years ago, as a candidate, future president Sarkozy used the motto "travailler plus pour gagner plus" (work more, earn more), in an attempt to make increase of working hours more popular. This lead to a host of derisive variants ("work more, earn less", "get fired, earn nothing", etc)

• Artist:Damien Saez
• Album:Messine