Octobre / October

Francis Cabrel “Octobre”

“Le vent fera craquer les branches
La brume viendra dans sa robe blanche
Y aura des feuilles partout
Couchées sur les cailloux
Octobre tiendra sa revanche
Le soleil sortira à peine
Nos corps se cacheront sous des bouts de laine
Perdue dans tes foulards
Tu croiseras le soir
Octobre endormi aux fontaines
Il y aura certainement,
Sur les tables en fer blanc
Quelques vases vides et qui traînent
Et des nuages pris aux antennes
Je t´offrirai des fleurs
Et des nappes en couleurs
Pour ne pas qu´Octobre nous prenne
On ira tout en haut des collines
Regarder tout ce qu´Octobre illumine
Mes mains sur tes cheveux
Des écharpes pour deux
Devant le monde qui s´incline
Certainement appuyés sur des bancs
Il y aura quelques hommes qui se souviennent
Et des nuages pris sur les antennes
Je t´offrirai des fleurs
Et des nappes en couleurs
Pour ne pas qu´Octobre nous prenne
Et sans doute on verra apparaître
Quelques dessins sur la buée des fenêtres
Vous, vous jouerez dehors
Comme les enfants du nord
Octobre restera peut-être.
Vous, vous jouerez dehors
Comme les enfants du nord
Octobre restera peut-être.”

– Francis Cabrel

Jack Kerouac “October in the Railroad Earth”

“There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern 
Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy 
afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel 
the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they’ll be 
charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot 
and in buses and all well-dressed thru workingman Frisco of 
Walkup ?? truck drivers and even the poor grime-bemarked Third 
Street of lost bums even Negros so hopeless and long left East 
and meanings of responsibility and try that now all they do is 
stand there spitting in the broken glass sometimes fifty in one 
afternoon against one wall at Third and Howard and here’s all 
these Millbrae and San Carlos neat-necktied producers and 
commuters of America and Steel civilization rushing by with San 
Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough 
time to be disdainful, they’ve got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all 
the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the 
railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above 
the following hotshot freight trains–it’s all in California, it’s all a 
sea, I swim out of it in afternoons of sun hot meditation in my 
jeans with head on handkerchief on brakeman’s lantern or (if not 
working) on book, I look up at blue sky of perfect lostpurity and 
feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me and I* have 
insane conversations with Negroes in second*-story windows 
above and everything is pouring in, the switching moves of 
boxcars in that little alley which is so much like the alleys of 
Lowell and I hear far off in the sense of coming night that engine 
calling our mountains.

But it was that beautiful cut of clouds I could always see above 
the little S.P. alley, puffs floating by from Oakland or the Gate of 
Marin to the north or San Jose south, the clarity of Cal to break 
your heart. It was the fantastic drowse and drum hum of lum 
mum afternoon nathin’ to do, ole Frisco with end of land 
sadness–the people–the alley full of trucks and cars of 
businesses nearabouts and nobody knew or far from cared who I 
was all my life three thousand five hundred miles from birth-O 
opened up and at last belonged to me in Great America.” – Jack Kerouac