Enfante comes from the verb "enfanter," which means "to give birth to" or "to beget." While it literally refers to childbirth, it's often used metaphorically to describe the creation or emergence of something new.
In this song, Daniel Balavoine uses it beautifully when he sings, "Le ciel enfante un soleil qui tire la mémoire de l'oubli" (The sky gives birth to a sun that pulls memory from oblivion). This poetic imagery evokes a powerful sense of renewal and hope, making it a truly captivating word.
Daniel Balavoine wrote this song in 1978 after covering the famine in Ethiopia and Eritrea for television. The image at the center of the song is a child sitting still, simply waiting for rain that will not come.
The verses move between two ideas: the sky as something that gives birth to a new day and the sky as something that buries the sun each night. Life and death sit side by side, the way they did for the people he had just seen. The child's cracked, dried-out land inherited nothing but drought.
The chorus is a plea rather than a description: "hear this cry," sung twice, then repeated later in the song. It asks the listener to notice suffering that is easy to look away from. The closing line, "the rain falls," offers no real resolution — it is less an answer than a wish stated as if it were already happening.
It is a protest song built from restraint rather than anger, letting one still image carry the weight of the whole subject.