Pour le plaisir de partir [English translation]

Always the same stupid sky

through the same squares in the windows.

“I need to breathe in some fresh air,”

the girl would always tell herself.

For ages she’d been dreaming of it,

for ages her bag had lain packed.

She wanted to grow up,

she needed to leave.

While others played dress-up,

she wanted to go see if Venice

was like it is in those songs,

if people cry there under its bridges;1

she wanted to see a crop of cherries

which nobody had ever picked before,

and to leave just for the sake of leaving.

One day she tossed everything out-

her motorbike, her dresses, her keys.

She left the shutters closed

outside her empty chambre.

And there were rumours in the town

of some boy she had run off to.

Nobody there wanted to believe

that she’d simply got fed up with it all.

While others played dress-up,

she wanted to go see if Venice

was like it is in those songs,

if people cry there under its bridges;

she wanted to see a crop of cherries

which nobody had ever picked before,

and to leave just for the sake of leaving.

There’s no map of

the roads to freedom.

Who knows where she ended up…

In some silly town?

Amid the cries of a revolution?

In some war of religion?

Or on an island in Oceania,

the last refuge of Paradise?

While others played dress-up,

she wanted to go see if Venice

was like it is in those songs,

if people cry there under its bridges;

she wanted to see a crop of cherries

which nobody had ever picked before,

and to leave just for the sake of leaving.

1. Ponte dei Sospiri