Le Chat et l'oiseau
Un village écoute désolé
Le chant d'un oiseau blessé
C'est le seul oiseau du village
Et c'est le seul chat du village
Qui l'a à moitié dévoré
Et l'oiseau cesse de chanter
Le chat cesse de ronronner
Et de se lécher le museau
Et le village fait à l'oiseau
De merveilleuses funérailles
Et le chat qui est invité
Marche derrière le petite cerceuil de paille
Où l'oiseau mort est allongé
Porté par une petite fille
Qui n'arrête pas de pleurer
Si j'avais su que cela te fasse tant de peine
Lui dit le chat
Je l'auris mangé tout entier
Et puis je t'aurais raconté
Que je l'avais vu s'envoler
S'envoler jusqu'au bout du monde
Làs-bas où c'est tellement loin
Que jamais on n'en revient
Tu aurais eu moins de chagrin
Simplement de la tristesse et des regrets
Il ne faut jamais faire les choses à moitié.
I'm catching up on my French reading during the holidays. Seeing as almost all of my friends in my French class have taken a French language course in a Francophonie country during the holidays whereas I haven't, I really need to catch up. Came across this great poem in Jacques Prévert's anthologie. Gosh, he just writes the such awesome witty, heart-warming and noir (is that even a description?) poems.
Take the one above, I wouldn't be so bold as to translate the whole thing since I only gotten about 80% of the poem upon first reading, but it's talking about the only cat in the village ate half of the only bird in the village (a bit gory.. I know). The mourning village threw a marvelous funeral for the bird: there was a straw coffin, the little girl who couldn't stop crying and even the cat was invited! Seeing all this commotion, the cat groused: If I had known that all this trouble would happen, I would've eaten him whole! Then I would tell you that the bird flew away to the far end of the world and was never coming back. You would've had less sadness, regrets and chargrin.
The moral of the story? DON'T LEAVE THINGS HALF DONE!
If only the cat in question behaved like the cat below...
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