We are not from a country but we are from a city
Where the main street limits the scenery
The factory chimneys hoot to death
The guard's lamp laughs at my style

Misery crushing its cigarette butt on my heart
Has left in my blood the indelible trace
Which has the same sound and the same color
As the soot from slag heaps, of useless coal

The forges of my temples have pounded the words
I have filed with my hands the hollow of evidences
The sooty words spit from blast furnaces
My tempered steel eyes invent silence

I get drunk in New York and fight in Paris
I swing in Rio and laugh in Montreal
But it is still here that grew very small
This fire-damp flower with a metal stem

We are not from a country but we are from a city
Where the main street limits the scenery
The factory chimneys hoot to death
The guard's lamp laughs at my style

CONSULTER LES PAROLES ORIGINALES