Le blason [English translation]

Having always got on well with it,

I would have liked celebrate, without acting inappropriately,

Tender feminine body, your most beautiful feature1

Which everyone who has seen it says is amazing.

It would have been my final song, my swan song,

My last love letter, my farewell message.

But unfortunately the words which designate it

Are claimed by the despicable and the execrable.

It is the great failing of the French language,

it is its Achilles heel and it is its disgrace,

to offer only words characterised by baseness

to this incomparable instrument of happiness.

When so many flowers have poetic names,

Tender feminine body, it is extremely unfortunate

That your sweetest, and most erotic,

And most intoxicating flower should have such dirty2 ones.

But the worst of all is one little word

Of three3 letters, not more, informal, in common use,

It is inexplicable, it is irrevocable,

Shame on him who used it first.

Shame on him who, out of spite, for a guess4

Endowed with the same name, in his poisonous bile,

This great friend of man and the scathing insult,

That man, it's probable, became known for it.

Misogynist for sure, vey probably sexless,

Completely resistant to the charms of Venus

Was this sod who absolutely, totally without shame

Created this moreover incovenient link.

A plague upon this homonymy!

It's injust, Madam, and it's invidious

That this king's portion of your anatomy

Is called the same as a lot of people.

May heaven cause that one day, in a fit of genius

An inspired poet, sustained by Pegasus,

Gives, cancelling in one fell swoop centuries of abuse,

To this real marvel a pretty christian name.

In the meantime, Madam, it would seem a shame,

And your admirers5 would all be upset by it,

To lose sight of [the facts] that for rendering homage to it

There are other means and that I know them,

And that I know them.

1. or characteristic; usually prerogative or privilege but it doesn't mean that here2. or improper3. Well, the French word has three letters; but maybe this should be changed to "four" in the English translation, as the English word is one letter longer than the French one4. or bet, or challenge5. or worshippers, or adorers

• Artist:Georges Brassens
• Album:Fernande