Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine
NATIVE TOWNS AND "FRENCHITUDE"
Cliches of overturned garbage cans
In the yellowing grey snow
Where an old crippled hound
Sniffs a bloody tampon
Frosted in the Christmas night
A steeple mumbles its knell of
For the Peking in the alleys
Who seems to emerge from death
He comes to stop on the place
To zoom some souvenirs
Ghosts studded with ice
Who crack themselves and tear up
Here there was an heaven
Where we used to rob our candy bars
Now there's nothing left my "zombi"
Not even a brothel or a bar
Here is the municipal crib
Under its distemper of grease
Where the foetal generations
Were coming to initiate themselves to spleen
Cow-boys with a 45 "colt"
In the blue tenderness of the latrines
We were all missing Indians
In front of our bowels of haemoglobin
Here is the canal covered with ice
Where drowned people are kept
And there it's only the grimace
Of a senile and peeled tomcat
But his eyes are so weird
And his agony so calm
That even the cats around here
Seem to be in exile
Here is the statue of the great man
Under the chestnut tree's specter
Where we crunched the apple
Of some viper with acne
And here are the highschool's walls
Where you threw up all your afternoon snacks
Trying to imagine
A way to stop your heart
But you never saw the faces
Of your stable fellows
You already were in the clouds
At the far end of the galaxies
Such a long time messing around in this hole
Counting the minutes that fall
Crucifying false barmaids
On the frozen walls of their tombs
A truck is passing on the bypass
And the North wind is waking up
But don't hope for a tornado
Here days are all the same