When my life is so dead
It would make a corpse blush
I don’t mope about, no
I think about Roberta
When my life is so empty
It would make a shy person dance
I don’t cry, no
I think about Roberta
When my life is dull
When my heart is at half-mast
And I still don’t love my wife
So I think about Roberta
When my life is so full of ugliness
It would make a priest slam 1
I don’t collapse, no
There is Roberta
Roberta is tiny
And in her hazel eyes
I sensed straightaway
A kind of party feeling
Roberta is 82 years old
Roberta has three children
Who could be my parents
Sometimes I think about that
My Roberta has a dress
That trips down to her ankles
And hanging from an earlobe
A little shining cross
Roberta has loved some men
A cook and two soldiers
But enthroned upon her chimney
It’s my photo in pride of place
Roberta is very slim
And when she returns my smiles
I believe strongly in the little Jesus
Stretched out upon her ear
Roberta is 82 years old
Roberta has three children
Who could be my parents
Sometimes I think about that
In the paths of the cemetery
We walk her memory
Along the names on the headstones
This one - Oh how she cuckolded her husband
That one - What a bastard he was
And when Sunday reaches the end
Of its rainy afternoon
I rest my head on her knees
And she plays with my hair
Then in her sheets which smell of the ages
She tells me she hasn’t done that
Since her last soldier
And then she cries my Roberta
She tells me that she no longer has the time
To be sensible and she takes
My cheeks between her hands
And kisses me warmly
Yes Roberta is 82 years old
I don’t know her grown-up children
I know that they could be my parents
She laughs about it showing a few teeth
Roberta always has her gourd
Of holy water under her arm
She had brought it back from Lourdes
With some friends all a little older than me
When my life is worthless
When sparks are flying between me and the missus 2
In the cotton wool of my dreams
Roberta dances without rest
When my life’s a piece of shit
My kids are ugly and annoying
But Sunday arrives with great strides
And Sunday - that means Roberta
Roberta will be holding out her hands
The way she’s always waiting for me
With the smile I've never seen
One the face of that leech I don't love
Roberta will have put on her dress
The one that cascades down to her ankles
And then hung from her earlobe
Her little shining cross
1. Slamming is a kind of performance poetry, kind of part rap, part beat poem2. “le torchon brule” literally “the tea-towel burns”, it means to argue.