La fille de Londres [English translation]

A rat came into my room

It gnawed at the mousetrap

It stopped the clock

and knocked over the tankard.

I took it into my white arms

It was warm like a child.

I cradled it so tenderly

and softly sang:

Sleep, my rat, my cop,

Sleep, my old bobby

Don't you blow your whistle on the sleepy wharves

when I hold my darling's hand.

A Chinese came out of the shadows

A Chinese looked at London

He wore a marine cap

adorned with a coral anchor

On Charly's doorstep

in Penny Fields, I smiled to him.

In the silence of the night,

I whispered to him:

I would like, I would like I don't know what

I wish I would no longer hear my voice.

I'm afraid, afraid of you, afraid of myself.

On his woolen blue sweater

was written in rounded letters

the name of an old company

that roams the world, or so they say.

We went to Charly's

in Penny Fields, far from worries,

and I danced all night

with my bedazzled Chink.

And it was bright and warm at Charly's

Tess played "Daisy Bell" on her old piano

A camel-toothed piano.

I led the Chinese into my room

He put the rat out

He stopped the clock

and knocked over the tankard.

I took him in my trembling arms

to soothe him like a child.

He fell asleep on his back...

And then I took his knife from him...

It was a treacherous and icy knife,

a nasty knife red with truth

a nasty red knife with no special purpose.

• Artist:Catherine Sauvage