Boulevard deserted after rainfall Cigarette ash mingles with café crumbs The dictionary between us remains closed Words too heavy to pronounce I collect fragments of conversation Like Baudelaire gathered his Flowers of Evil The distance between languages Creates a wound of its own Under influences Melancholy in translation Distortion pedal pressed to the floor My accent bleeds through these words As autumn bleeds into winter I speak in borrowed syllables But my thoughts remain ailleurs Metro tickets yellowing in coat pockets Remind me of places I've tried to abandon The cassette player devours Verlaine's verses While I chase guitar tones across the Channel The Seine and the Thames carry different ghosts But drowning feels the same The distance between languages Becomes a home of its own Under influences Melancholy in translation Distortion pedal pressed to the floor My accent bleeds through these words As autumn bleeds into winter I speak in borrowed syllables But my thoughts remain ailleurs Rimbaud whispers in my headphones: Je est un autre Smith and Morrissey taught me How to wear this alienation Like a second skin Exile within language itself The most intimate of departures Le plus intime des départs Chalk cliffs of another country's shore Appear through morning fog I carry dictionaries instead of maps Lost in the suburbs of meaning Where every mistranslation Creates a world of its own Under influences Melancholy in translation Distortion pedal pressed to the floor My accent bleeds through these words As autumn bleeds into winter These borrowed syllables now mine Though my thoughts remain ailleurs Toujours ailleurs
