Snapshots of Childhoods in France

In Paris last year, we had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Serge and Pierrette, activists with deep roots in the France of resistance, opposition, and humane solidarity. Not a few American activists we have known have been unimaginative political creatures, indifferent to the subtle pleasures of life and culture. Very different our French friends! Pierrette who likes to recite and sing dozens of poetic texts from memory, including but not limited to the songs of the anti-fascist Resistance, has allowed us to publish in our translation some samples of the “Nursery Rhymes and Ditties of Pierrette Azais-Blanc.” They evoke memories of croaking choruses of Occitan frogs and Parisian squares with those merry-go-rounds immortalized by the poet Rilke.

Poems by Pierrette (Azais-Blanc)

Translated by Andrew (Weeks)

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A frog sits in a meadow
– green all green on a green leaf –
and there is a beetle too,
gold buttons and buttercups
damp daisies in the wet grass

Plop!
The croaker plunged back in.



At funfair, merry-go-rounds offer funny wooden horses
Oliver will play and ride
little Cécile is too small

But Sunday we will be back
when I get rid of my dress
—pretty but uncomfortable—
then the three of us will ride
big wooden horses and laugh.


Cécile is sleeping
Cécile is sleeping and her sleep lies under the spell of silence
Awakening,
the calm of the day bursts into the panic of the rushed hours
Cécile cries out.
She smiles at the clouds 
serene calm.

And all the while my olive tree
my Oliver
is growing up
singing the childhood of the world


Snow Song

It’s snowing on the tulips
It’s snowing on the dahlias
The dahlias are very sad
the tulips pucker their lips
In April: do you see that
white sky is descending straight
into gardens onto roofs
with its butterflies so cool

It’s snowing, look, it’s snowing
It’s the cold, cut me kindling.
We’ll burn it in the fireplace
Where it blazes right and bright
and warm for a little part


The Whale as Nun

The whale is taking the veil
the whale is tacking her sail
she’s  coming back from the depth
for she is just out of breath

She’s now also quite bereft
of her missal and her veil
soon there will be nothing left
but a little water jet.