Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine
PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN 1922
I met you one night
At the bend of a lost path
That was going nowhere
Where you were standing still
Balancing on a wire
Tightened above hazard
And when I asked you
Who you were and where you were coming from
You answered me by a look
You know, I'm only a fragrance
And I come back from somewhere else...
Later in a bar's corner
In front of a pin-ball machine
You showed me your rip
You told me some strange words
That were flying like bats
In the middle of your hair
They were talking to me about the unknown
About mysterious hidden paths
Going far away behind the walls
About a tenebrous voyage
Abroad frontiers you're looking
For a mirror or an opened heart
To project onto your fantasies
Jumping from a bus-platform
You catch the first fast train
For Marseilles or Amsterdam
Just a coin in a taxiphone
My sweet love don't wait for me
Tonight I won't be back
And you are on your way again
To your tenebrous voyage
One of these days you come back
Just like throwing out of a dream
In the morning unconsciousness
With drawn features cose of fatigue
Empty headed, empty look
You don't know what happens
And you don't understand anymore
You don't understand nothing more
Just time to make up your eyes
To take a bath and love me
Again you think about other faces
Drowned to the bottom of a glass of alcohols
You ask me for a cigarette
And you tell me with a vaguely air
My sweet love no hard feelings
You know I belong to nobody
Tomorrow I've got to go again
And you are on your way again
To your tenebrous voyage