Le mécréant [English translation]

Is there anything more obnoxious in our day and age

anything more hopeless than to lack belief in God?

I would like to have faith, the faith of my coalman

who is happy as a pope and dumb as a brick.

My neighbor upstairs, one Blaise Pascal

Kindly gave me this friendly suggestion:

"Kneel down, pray and beg

Pretend to believe, and soon you will believe."

I started reciting, my kneecaps on the ground,

All the Ave Maria, all the Pater Noster,

in the streets, cafes, trains, buses,

all the de profundis, all the morpionibus.

At the same time, in the middle of nettles,

a cassock on my heels, I put myself in disguise.

And, tonsured like a friar, my guitar in my hand,

I set out on the way towards the faith of salvation.

I stumbled across a bunch of sacristy ladybugs;

taking me for someone else, in chorus, they told me:

"Father, sing some sacred refrain to us,

some holy song of which you have the secret!"

Fervently scraping the strings under my fingers

I sang "Le Gorille" and "Putain de toi".

Shouting at the impostor, the traitor, the hypocrite,

they want to subject me to Abelard's torture.

I am going to join the high-pitched voices in the seraglio,

and bells will no longer hang down from me.

Thanks to my cut voice I will have the place of honor

Between choir singers and a wooden cross.

Attracted by the noise, a charity lady

tells them: "What are you doing? Stop, you fools!

There are so many men these days with a perverse tendency

to obstinately take Cupid in reverse.

So many men deprived of their virile charms!

Let us not remove them from those who still have them."

These heavy arguments made such a big impression,

I was allowed to leave with ovations.

But I will not take another step towards the heavenly path:

faith will come by itself or it will not come at all.

I never killed, never raped, either,

and it's been some time I haven't stolen.

If the Lord exists, in the end he'll see

that I deceive myself well enough even without faith.

• Artist:Georges Brassens