XV VIEILLESSE

Le traqueur a sonné qui connaissait ma trace.
La ville a pris l'odeur des mâtins et des bois.
Sous le masque de fer j'ai mal caché ma race.
Mon bonheur ébréché croule sous les abois.

Dans la salle à brouter va passer une fille.
Le noir gaine la jambe et l'oeil est du vautour.
Le chant sourd de son corps, mais la lèvre qui brille
Inaltérablement se ferme au cri d'amour.

Le chasseur qui me suit me cèle son visage,
Mais le chant qui me hante a des accents connus.
Le châtiment m'est dû pour mes amours trop sages.
Le voile des ans morts couvre mes désirs nus.

La fille qui chantait se tait à mon passage.
La nuit prend le sourire et le visage est clos.
Etes-vous les piqueurs de la meute de l'âge,
Sonneurs du hallali qui serait mon repos?

Michel Galiana (c) 1991

XV AGE

The hunter sounds his horn as his dogs got my scent.
Over the town a smell of hounds and wood, a spray.
My iron mask hardly hid my remote descent.
My chipped happiness is collapsing, at bay.

A woman in this browsing hall by me did pass:
Sheathed in black silk stockings, with piercing vulture eyes.
From her body a song welled up, and yet the gloss
Of her lips closed her mouth to her soft loving cries.

The hunter who chases after me hides his face,
But the song that haunts me is known to me, surely.
I'm due a punishment for my poor loves so chaste:
The veil of years gone by shrouds my lustful folly.

The tune of the girl stopped as she was passing by.
The night wiped her smile off her stiff poker face.
Are you the whips making the pack of old age cry,
Buglers sounding my death as a last act of grace?