Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeureLes mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l’onde si lasseVienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeureL’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violenteVienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeurePassent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la SeineVienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Here is my translation:
Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
And our love
It must remind me
That joy always comes after pain.
Cometh the night and soundeth the hour
The days go by yet I remain
Hand in hand let us stay face to face
Whilst
Under the bridge of our arms race
Eternal gazes, the weary waves
Cometh the night and soundeth the hour
The days go by yet I remain
Love goes by like this flowing water
Love goes by
How life is slow
And how Hope is rough
Cometh the night and soundeth the hour
The days go by yet I remain
The days and weeks pass
Neither time past
Nor love returns
Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
Cometh the night and soundeth the hour
The days go by yet I remain
This poem has been chiming in my head like a song on repeat for the past few weeks. I live near the Pont Mirabeau, and had read this poem a long time ago, but it had never really meant much to me. However, crossing the bridge the other day I noticed that there is a plaque with the first verse and refrain of this poem inscribed on it. I noticed how the music of the rhyme of the refrain reflects the magic, hypnotic banality of the river’s slow movement, and so I dug up the poem as soon as I got home.
I have tried to translate it as faithfully as possible, but found it difficult to recreate the music and rhyme of the French… For me, Le Pont Mirabeau makes me think about the unending torrents of people that flow through Paris every day. I often think about this, especially when I see old footage of horses and carriages, or men in tailcoats and top hats walking along the Rue de Rivoli or admiring the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The city hardly changes at all, but the people – so flimsy and fragile – live out there lives and loves here, die, and are then replaced by other lives and stories that begin and end. It’s like the water under the solid, seemingly unmovable Mirabeau Bridge.
There is certainly a sadness to the poem, and in the idea of love and time flowing past, as unretreivable as the river flowing under the bridge. But I also find something consoling in the resolute solidity of the bridge, which ‘remains” despite the days going by. Though life (and perhaps love) is transitory, there is still art – what we create and leave behind us – which is immortal. To my mind, the bridge in this poem represents the poem, the painting, the symphony, the building, the city – which man creates as a flag to his experience.
Reviewed by Emily Ardagh
