You sought for yourselves neither our sobs, nor glory
No church organ or the prayer for the dying
Eleven years now gone by, eleven years time flies
You were only making use of your weapons
Death frightens none who calls themselves a partisan
Your faces were posted over our cities walls
Dark as the night, hairy and grave, menacing
Their poster looking like a bloodshot stain
For one might struggle to pronounce your names
So that passersby may find your frightening
None did seem to consider you French citizens
People would come and go round, paying you no glance
But one evening past curfew, a wandering hand
Had scribbled over your photographs "Died for France"
And we owed to this act mornings not quite as bleak
Everything was wrapped in the color of frost
Closing February, for your ultimate sighs
Which is when one of yours then so calmly stated
Joy to all, joy to those who will stay alive
I die without hatred for the German people
Farewell to pain and to pleasure, Farewell to roses
Farewell to life farewell to light and to wind
Re-mary, be happy and think of me often
You who are to remain in the beauty of things
When all will be over, later, in Erevan
The rays of our great winter sun shines on the hill
How beautiful is nature, and how my heart sinks
Justice shall be done, trailing our triomph
My Mélinée, o you my love and my orphan
And I tell you to live and to have a baby
They were twenty and three when the rifles flowered
Twenty three laying down their hearts before their time
Twenty three from away who yet were our own
Twenty three who loved life so, they would die for it
Twenty three who cried "for France" before they fell
Louis Aragon
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