Regarde cette cigarette. Bien sûr ça me ronge les poumons. Qu’est-ce qui peut me donner un climax physiologique pareil qui se renouvelle toutes les cinq seconds, toutes les cinq minutes ?
Serge Gainsbourg
Out of the shtetl of a childhood refrain,
Out of the jeering broken mouths of whores,
Out of the sky’s golden piano,
He stumbled, spitting black tobacco dreams,
Branded with the sun’s yellow star.
Attack me, kill me, do your worst,
But I will sing the fury of a man…
Why is this one saved and this one damned ?
God has such a crooked smile…
Alone in the Russia of a girl’s thighs,
He could see Greek statues and dazzling seas,
And hear the old music prancing
Across the warm sands as the timid little urchin
Looked up from play, humming his delight,
And beheld a goddess hovering before him,
Shimmering with sunlight and sea-breeze…
Nothing on earth can destroy me,
The universe is music, and music is love…
That was his museum of memories,
A tiny house with a black front door,
All black inside, impeccable, serene,
Everything in its place, under control,
And no mirrors anywhere,
A vampire shrinking from his own reflection;
Black walls, black ceiling, black marble floors,
Black furniture, black piano, black front door,
And a black uniformed valet to answer the door;
No messy daylight was allowed to enter,
He removed all the glass from the windows
And installed tiny panes of bubbled crystal
That let no light in at all.
How could he, with such disorder in his head,
Tolerate the slightest disorder around him,
That would be madness…
His prancing ear punned on women’s bodies,
And clowned in the circus ring,
As the green wolf ran through the Russian taiga,
Howling at fairy-tale moons;
Bring on the next adventure !
Instead of killing ourselves,
We shall revel in the mess !
Drunkards, lovers, mummers, jesters,
We shall inherit the earth…
Nothing is forbidden,
And the joy is to shock, to disturb, to amuse…
Savage pride twisted its blade deep inside him,
As he shrank from the mirror like a vampire,
Hating his naked body,
“Come back when you’re old enough !” the whores used to shout,
And so he picked the ugliest old whore he could find
To lose his cherry to,
On a grubby mattress in a grubby room,
So disgusted that he could not even come…
When he played in bars and nightclubs he was so terrified,
So unable to remember the words of his own songs,
That he would write them down on paper,
And when his hands shook too much he would roll the paper up
Into a little ball and chuck it at the audience
And they, the chic and soigné, would applaud,
Thinking it part of his act…
Out of his mouth came the cruelty of lovers,
The simplicity of sinners,
The sadness of men;
There are no rules, only possibilities,
No taboos, only truth.
Fantastic scandal of life off the leash,
Words on a spree, jumping the barriers,
Exulting in their own bravado !
There he was, Parmigianino’s Cupid-Jesus,
Holding up a red rose to his sexy mother…
He stuck his nose and tongue into everything,
Smelling and tasting the fecund shit…
I will cut you with my hooligan knife,
Make you bleed the waters of life…
Bleary bandido of fame,
Rumpled as a whore’s bedsheets,
He newspapered over the cracks in the sky,
And crawled like a gecko over giant women’s breasts,
Trapped in their glass horizons…
He was the gargoyle bursting out from the tower,
Spurting water from his screaming maw,
Pissing on the heads below…
Black coffee nights, by the light of a cigarette,
He worked his heart out, fast as a car crash,
A saturnine imp two thousand years old,
Sticking his tongue out at the stupid world,
Licking beauty’s arsehole with relish,
Playing with his own caca.
I can do whatever I want,
Just you try and stop me!
Life was a big red balloon, bought on the street corner,
Slipping out of his grasp,
Soaring away over the rooftops…
The air was a dizzy America of sounds,
The world’s bazaar, inexhaustible and free;
Liberty was his laughing perversion,
Turning somersaults and swinging from the trees.
His wry lips bit on dark jokes and cruel wit,
And caressed the Whore Goddess,
Spinning puns like plates on sticks…
Tradition was the Madonna and the Whore;
He could light tall candles before her,
Then turn her round and screw her up the arse…
Bloodshot daylight writhed in agony,
Sweating second chances,
While evil moons stuck pins in the voodoo doll.
Everybody loved him now :
When he tottered down the street, leaning on a cane,
People came up to him, young and old,
Just to smile and say hello,
Scrying in his purblind eyes…
He died in his sleep, alone, in the middle of a dream,
Stretched out on his bed, hands clenched into infantile fists,
Conjuror of a logical conclusion,
His face like an African mask.
This is the joy they call despair,
The cigarette’s Zoroastrian fire…
He had thought that death would somehow overlook him,
Preserve him as a stately ruin :
Surely that was not too much to ask ?
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