Paris mai [English translation]

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

• Artist:Claude Nougaro
• Album:Paris Mai