Ma France

From plains to forests, from valleys to hills
From the spring about to be born to your dead seasons
From what I've lived to what I imagine
I will never finish writing your song
My America

Under the blazing summer sun that curves Provence
From the broom of Brittany to the heather of Ardèche
Something in the air has this transparency
And the taste of happiness that makes my lips dry
My America

This air of freedom beyond borders
To foreign peoples that gave vertigo
And whose prestige you now usurp
She always answers to the name of Robespierre
My America

The one of old Hugo thundering from his exile
Of five-year-old children working in the mines
The one that built with her hands your factories
The one of which Mr. Thiers said to shoot her
My America

Picasso holds the world at the end of his palette
From the lips of Éluard, doves fly
Your prophetic artists never finish
Saying that it's time for misfortune to succumb
My America

Their voices multiply to become one
The one that always pays for your crimes, your mistakes
Filling history and its mass graves
That I sing forever the one of the workers
My America

The one that only possesses sleepless nights in gold
For the stubborn struggle of this daily time
From the newspaper sold on a Sunday morning
To the poster stuck on the wall of the next day
My America

Whether she rises from the mines or descends from the hills
The one that sings in me, the beautiful, the rebel
She holds the future, tightly in her delicate hands
The one from thirty-six to sixty-eight candles
My America