L'amour à la papa [English translation]

Daddy love

Tell me at once

Tell me, my heart hardly jumps

It’s been months and months

Months blocking my view

For something else from you

For months now it stretches

I’m lost in conjectures

What words could I find

So that you’ll read my mind

Daddy love

Were I to dive in

There’s no hot nor cold feeling

I am the ivy

You’re stonework peeling,

I take root at your base

But you flake away

When into you I pry,

You are stone and my stems grow dry

Daddy love

Tell me at once

Tell me, my heart hardly jumps

It’s been months and months

Months blocking my view

For something else from you

It’s ninety1 in the shade

Of my body and you fade

You’re not an affair

You can only spare

Daddy love

Believe me when I say

You can do that in thirty-two ways2

If through bitterness

I should settle for less

It’s highly likely one day

When I lose patience

Then to the station

I’d pack you and your love away

Daddy love

Tell me at once

Tell me, my heart hardly jumps

It’s been months and months

Months blocking my view

For something else from you

At the waterfront station

My respect you can rally

By making an embarcation

To Cythera3 by galley4

Write me what you see

Tell me, tell me

If they make daddy love

1. I guess she’s using degrees Fahrenheit, although that’s not normally how temperature is expressed in France2. Perhaps the lover's age?3. Poetic island of love4. Generally a prison ship

• Artist:Juliette Gréco