Le Vieux Piano [English translation]

A piano has died and she loved it

when she was young when she would come and drown her sorrows

leaning up against the nostalgic piano.

It was beautiful, the piano, good piano,

friends' old piano back in their day,

at Bianco the Argentinian's around three o'clock in the morning

when she drank her pint of forgetfulness.

And alone now, she thinks of the life of this old dead piano.

She sees, she hears the masses of her twenty years tumbling out of a chord.

At the bar, when she drinks,

it’s true that she is remembering hands on the white ivory,

Bianco's hands, hands that gave a gift of a bit of old times.

But in his jeans, a ghost in blue jeans,

a second one and then twenty who chat as friends

about an old-fashioned bistro, about the old-fashioned piano.

She shouted: "Me, I know! I know!"


She's going tell the story locked up inside the old dead piano,

and this is the adventure that beats the tempo more and more loudly

in the light of life, the hands of friends,

the eyes of tomorrow,

life before us, love, and then everything

And all and nothing more.

They have all died in the middle of a chord.

They died in Ravel, in a funny rainbow in the sky.

A soldier has come in, a soldier has come in ...

A piano has died, and she loved it

when she was young and she came to drown her sorrows

leaning up against the nostalgic piano.

• Artist:Édith Piaf