Les grognards

Listen, people of Paris
You’re not feeling feverish
Hear those footsteps walking through the night
Getting closer to your dreams
You see shadows forming a mural
Gigantic, hanging in your sky
Listen, people of Paris
Look, people of Paris, at these eternal shadows
Marching and singing under your sky

We, the grumblers, the grenadiers
Without grenades, without rifles, or shoes
Without enemies and without an army
We’re bored in the night of the past
We, the grumblers, the grenadiers
Without grenades, without rifles, or shoes
Tonight we’re gonna march
Through your Champs-Élysées
Wagram, Iena, Eylau, Arcole, Marengo…
Sounds good
What pretty battles
All this work
Wasn’t for nothing
Since the street names
The avenue names
Where you walk
Are engraved with the blood
Of our twenty years

We, the grumblers, the grenadiers
Without grenades, without rifles, or shoes
Without enemies and without an army
We’re bored in the night of the past
We, the grumblers, the grenadiers
We died on foreign fields
We visited Russia
But we never saw Paris
We didn’t have the time
To have a spring
That smiled at us
Our poor loves
Lasted a day
Goodbye and thanks
Roll, roll, drums
In the early dawn
We were leaving
To the sound of the bugle

And the cannon
Our lives danced
We, the grumblers, the grenadiers
We’ve been forgotten, forgotten…
Since the time of our battles
So many soldiers have come and gone
But tonight you’ll see us
Without grenades, without rifles, or shoes
Marching in step
Through your Champs-Élysées
Without grenades…
Without rifles…
Or shoes…
In Paris…