Le Temps Des Cerises Lyrics in English Charles Trenet

"Le Temps des Cerises" ("The Time of Cherries") is a French standard written in 1866, long before Charles Trené recorded it. On its surface it's a simple, wistful song about cherry season -- a short, sweet time of year when lovers gather in orchards and cherries fall "like drops of blood."

That last image is the key to the song's deeper meaning. Cherry season became closely associated with the Paris Commune of 1871, a workers' uprising crushed in a bloody week that happened to fall during cherry season. The song was written a few years earlier and isn't explicitly political, but its imagery of blood-red cherries and a bittersweet, fleeting joy made it an enduring, unofficial anthem of that history.

The singer says he'll always love "the time of cherries" because that's when he keeps an open wound in his heart -- a memory of love and loss he wouldn't trade away, even though it hurts. It's a song about how the shortest, most beautiful seasons of life often leave the deepest marks.