Avant La Guerre

I was twenty, a tender soul
You sixteen, with everything to learn
When I wrote you poems
Where everything rhymed with I love you
You were still a schoolgirl
It was a little before the war

At the dawn of adolescence
Desire disrupts childhood
In the grass of an early spring
We united in simple marriage
Our witness was God the father
It was a little before the war

But in the wind of sinful loves
What must happen happens
Your waist gained importance
We were married in a hurry
But one day things changed
It was a little before the war

An untouched uniform
A rifle and four cartridges
The fields burned in retreat
The barbed wire of defeat
Somewhere in foreign land
I see us before the war

Where are the sixteen years of your life
And the springs of our follies
When the golden doors of carelessness
Opened to us on chance
And everything shone with light
Before the night, before the war
Before the war