Chanson dans le sang [English translation]

The world is covered with great patches of blood.

Where does it flow to, all this shed blood?

Is it the earth drinking to intoxication?

That would be a strange way to get drunk, then:

so well behaved, so dull...

No, the earth does not get itself drunk.

There's nothing wrong in the way earth spins.

It just moves regularly its little greengrocer1 cart

rain...snow...

hail...good weather...

It never gets drunk ;

it hardly indulges once in a while

in a measly little volcano.

It spins, the earth.

It spins with its trees, its gardens, its houses.

It spins with its great patches of blood,

and all living things spin with it and bleed.

And it doesn't care,

the earth.

It spins and all the living things start screaming.

It doesn't care.

It spins.

It keeps spinning

and the blood keeps flowing...

Where does it flow to, all this shed blood?

The blood or murders, the blood of wars,

the blood of misery,

and the blood of men being tortured in jail,

the blood of children quietly tortured by their Dad and Mom,

and the blood of men bleeding from the head

in loony bins.

And the blood of the roofer,

when the roofer slips and falls from the roof.

And the blood that comes and flows profusely

with the newborn, with the new child...

The mother screaming, the child crying...

The blood flows... The earth spins,

the earth keeps spinning,

the blood keeps flowing.

Where does it flow, all this shed blood?

The blood of beaten up, humiliated,

suicided, shot, sentenced men,

and the blood of those who die just like that, by accident.

A living man walks by in the street,

with all his blood inside.

All of a sudden he's dead,

and all his blood is outside,

and the other living men wipe the blood away.

They carry the corpse away,

but the blood is stubborn,

so here, where the dead lay,

much later, a trace of

blackened blood is still spread.

Congealed blood,

rust of life, rust of corpses.

Blood curdled like milk,

like milk does when it turns,

when it turns like the earth spins,

like the earth spinning

with its milk and its cows,

with its living and its dead.

The earth spinning with its trees, its living, its houses

The earth spinning with its marriages,

the burials

the shellfishes

the regiments

the earth that spins and spins and spins

with its great rivers of blood.

1. a greengrocer is called "marchand des quatre saisons" (four seasons merchant)

• Artist:Jacques Prévert