Campanades a morts [English translation]

I.

The bells toll for the dead

With a cry against war,

In the name of the three children who have been lost

By those three black bells.

And the people hide

When the lamentation draws nearer;

Now, it will be another three sorrows

That we must preserve in our memories.

The bells toll for the dead,

For those three mouths closed...

Oh, God forgive that trouvadour

Who forgets those three notes!

Who has strangled the breath

Of those young bodies,

Who had no other wealth

Beyond the grief of those who weep over them?

Murderers of reasons, destroyers of lives:

May you never find piece in the rest of your days

And may our memory haunt you even during death!

The bells toll for the dead

With a cry against war,

In the name of the three children who have been lost

By those three black bells.

II.

Open my womb

To be their eternal resting place;

Bring the best flowers

From my gardens.

For these men

Dig deep inside me

And, on my body,

Yes, do carve their names.

Don't let any wind

Disturb the sleep

Of those who have died

Without bowing their heads.

Open my womb

To be their eternal resting place;

Bring the best flowers

From my gardens!

III.

Only seventeen years old

And you're already so old;

Jealous of the light in another's eyes.

You wanted to close his eyelids.

But you won't succeed, for we all preserve that light

And our eyes shall be thunderbolts in all your evenings.

Seventeen years old

And you're already so old;

Envious of such great youthful beauty,

You wanted to rip off his extremities.

But you won't succeed, for we remember his body

And we shall learn how to love him every night.

Seventeen years old

And you're already so old;

Impotent before the love that he enjoyed,

You gave him death as his companion.

But you wont' succeed, because everything he loved

Will always live in Springtime within our bodies.

Seventeen years old

And you're already so old;

Envious of such great youthful beauty,

You wanted to rip off his extremities.

But you won't succeed, for we all preserve that light

And our eyes shall be thunderbolts in all your evenings.

IV.

Misery became a poet

And it wrote across the fields

In the shape of barricades,

And men walked towards them.

Everyone became a word

Within that victorious poem...