La cuisine [English translation]

The golden girls of yesteryear

In Dior gowns and Hermès bags

Set out in the waxworks museum

Of the film society or Sam Levin1

Regret in these fair times

Of salt-and-pepper and curlers

They didn’t learn

The cookery

Which keeps dear hubbies

From straying

The golden girls of yesteryear

In sport minks and Mercedes

Will meet up in the multiplexes

With Musidora2 and the Son of the Sheik3

But my, how they’ll regret

In these times of flashbacks in curlers

They didn’t learn

The cookery

Which keeps dear hubbies

From straying

These girls who play

In bright red tights and scooby strings4

Will have their golden age

In Cosmoscope or Vadim Express5

Then will come the sweet times

Of salt-and-pepper and so-say-all-of-us6

They’re the ones who’ll learn

The cookery

Which keeps dear hubbies

From straying

The golden girls of yesteryear

In Dior gowns and Hermès bags

Who now raise a creak

From the iron corset under the cashmere jersey

Rather than making pâtés

On their identity cards7

To keep a handsome lover

From straying

Will start learning cookery

Today!

1. Photographer of the forties and fifties2. Silent film star3. Rudolph Valentino film4. A plastic DIY jewellery line fashionable in the 1950s5. Fictitious fashion titles: ‘Vadim’ referring to the film director who discovered Brigitte Bardot6. ’Mironton’ is a meaningless refrain from the folk song ‘Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre’, who’s tune is the possible origin of ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’ in English7. If this is an idiom, it’s not one I know