La Ballade Des Gens Qui Sont Nés Quelque part

It's true that all these little villages
All these towns, hamlets, places, cities
With their strong castles, churches, beaches
They have only one weakness and that's being inhabited
And being inhabited by people who look
At the rest with disdain from the top of their ramparts
The race of nationalists, cockade wearers
The happy fools who were born somewhere
The happy fools who were born somewhere

Damn those children of their motherland
Impaled once and for all on their steeple
Who show you their towers, museums, town hall
Make you see the homeland until you squint
Whether they come from Paris or Rome or Sète
Or from the middle of nowhere or even Zanzibar
Or even from Montcuq, they boast about it, damn it
The happy fools who were born somewhere
The happy fools who were born somewhere

The sand in which their ostriches
Bury their heads is no finer
As for the air they use to inflate their bladders
Their soap bubbles, it's divine breath
And little by little, they puff themselves up
Their necks thinking that even the manure made by
Their wooden horses makes everyone jealous
The happy fools who were born somewhere
The happy fools who were born somewhere

It's not a cliché, their knowledge
They wholeheartedly pity the unlucky ones
The clumsy ones who didn't have the presence
The presence of mind to be born among them
When the alarm sounds on their precarious happiness
Against foreigners, more or less barbaric
They come out of their hole to die in war
The happy fools who were born somewhere
The happy fools who were born somewhere

My god, how good it would be on the earth of men
If we encountered this incongruous race
This unwelcome race that thrives everywhere
The race of the locals, the country folks
How beautiful life would be in all circumstances
If you hadn't brought forth from nothing all these fools
Perhaps proof of your nonexistence
The happy fools who were born somewhere
The happy fools who were born somewhere