Here's a rough and loose attempt at translating Didier Barbelivien's "L'Adieu," as I'm currently infatuated with how it was performed during Les Enfoires 2005 (Patrick Bruel, Jean-Louis Aubert, Marc Lavoine, and Jean-Jacques Goldman).


Farewell
to the drenched trees of September
to its sun of what's remembered
to the soft words, to the tender words
I'd listened to you say to me
within the curve of a low road
or the light of a candle

Farewell to what could have been us together
to floods of speech about love

This farewell
It's a task without end
one which drove us to our limits [lit. "for which horses had to suffer"]
and the glimmers of your absence
marred the shadow of pleasure

This farewell, it's a letter from you
I lock within my heart
a fantasy of you and me
a sense of being alive somewhere else

This farewell
it's merely a truth with God.
All the rest -- it's a letter to write
to those who had said good-bye
when they should have clung to each other

You can't look away any longer
from the hot glow of the fire
We knew of other flames
and they consumed us so

This farewell
It's our two bodies apart
and the river of time passing by
I don't know for whom you left
and you don't know who's holding me [*]
We won't harbor jealousy anymore
nor words to hurt
Our parting was only as hard
as we decided it had to be.

Oh, this farewell --!
This farewell
it's the drawn-out weeping of the clocks
and the trumpets of Waterloo
saying to all who ask
that love fell into the water
off a boat sozzled with sadness
one we ruined, you and I
its passengers were in distress
and I know of two who let themselves go under

Farewell
to the dank trees of September
to the soft words, to the tender words
that I'd heard said to me
on a path of a low road
like the burning of a candle.
Farewell to what we could have been together
to the power of being in love

This farewell
it's the white wolf on the mountain
and the hunters down in the valley
the sun that travels with us
and a crazy, crying moon.
This farewell -- it's like the tide
ready to swallow everything up
The sailors and their brides
the past with the future
Oh, this farewell--
oh, farewell!


I took quite a few liberties, and I know there are idioms and nuances eluding me, so corrections and illuminations are welcome. (Among other things, I've been mulling over if/how/whether to distinguish between "L'adieu" vs. just "adieu"... and the suffering horses, there's an idiom I'm missing, no?) There's another video of it, of Garou in concert, and a page or so back in the comments there's a rhymed English translation (that I didn't see until after mashing out the above).

And so to bed. Perhaps to dream of being serenaded... ;-)

ETA: Tweaked this some more 8/16. Also saw a video of Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat ice-dancing to Garou's rendition. The choreography brings out some interesting nuances -- the separateness of the lovers, the shadows, the sense of things always being in motion even after endings -- and yet I'd like to see even more done with it. Watching it felt like I was looking at a draft...

[*] Lavoine sings "qui j'embrasse," which translates to "whom I'm embracing" instead.