This post is meant to share two brief podcasts worth watching. Thank you L’Orient Le Jour for the moving insights by these children and youth.
Following the two podcasts, if you wish, you may listen to Mr. Mario Pelchat’s song on Lebanon’s cedars, with its powerful lyrics. Bambi translated them on her blog three years ago. For your convenience, she is re-sharing them at the end of this post. SADLY, this older French-Canadian song remains timely.
To end on a more hopeful and joyful note, the last song is a beautiful French song by Mr. Enrico Macias, entitled “Enfants de tous pays” [ Children From All Countries], that Bambi also posted in the past. An English translation of its lyrics (https://shorturl.at/uvO56) is also shared below.
May all the children be safe and able to play. May peace and love prevail.
A quick translation of “the Cedars of Lebanon” (by Mr. Mario Pelchat)
“Gaping holes
Like anthills where homeless roam
Where the people of Phenicia once lived
From the East of blood, genes and Arabian language
Screams, tears
And rage in the heart for so much violence
While we swim elsewhere under rains of abundance
It is often when we cry that we experience indifference
What are we going to say
When danger surrounds us,
To our children who question us
Who we try in vain to teach
The verb “to love”?
What are we going to do?
If not find some refuge,
Hope for another flood
Or kill yourself to understand
And forgive
Twilight
Like the life that disappears under the rubble
Another night to invent the end of the world
A new era where you are no longer afraid of your shadow
Sentries
Which remind us that we are not at liberty
On a land that we did not choose to inhabit
Under the wrath of a God we want to appropriate
What are we going to say
When danger surrounds us,
To our children who question us
Who we try in vain to teach
The verb “to love”?
What are we going to do?
Otherwise confide in the stars
Praying to the saints of the cathedrals
Because we are too little to understand
To forgive
A strong people
Who still believes that tomorrow will be different
Like a treasure that a giant knows how to recognize
As are, in the north, the cedars of Lebanon.”
“Enfants de tous pays” [Children from All Countries]
“Chorus:
Children from all countries
Hold out your bruised hands
Sow love
And then give life
Children from all countries
And of all colours
You have in your hearts
Our happiness
It’s in your hands that tomorrow our earth
Is going to be entrusted to go out from the night
And our hope to see the light again
Is in your eyes which awaken to life
Dry your tears, throw out your guns
Make of this world a paradise
Chorus
You have to think of our fathers’ past
And of promises which they never have kept
The truth is to love without any borders
And give every day a bit more
For wisdom and wealth
Have just one address: paradise
Chorus
And on the day when love on the Earth
Becomes king, you can rest
When our prayers are covered in joy
You can have your eternity
And every laughs of your kingdom
Will make a paradise
Chorus”.
