Help Me Fellow Songwriters and/or French Speakers

I think some of my friends speak French. Anyway, here is my idea. I have this song that I truly love called "Echo Some Tune" that I wrote in 2005 or so. It's a spooky ballad in 6/8 about the narrator staying in the Midwest while someone they love goes to California to follow a nebulous idea. Think Angel season four, Hitchcock's Vertigo, vampires, Free Fallin', Mullholland Drive, etc. I love the song but have never been 100% satisfied with it. I can't think of a first line that REALLY satisfies me. Here's where it's at right now:

Listen/download: Echo Some Tune

Why should you fight fair?
There's no cause to fight there
There's no one to turn to at all
Palm trees and loneliness
Sunshine and coke I guess
that's how far you had to fall
I wish that the courtyard apartment house life in L.A.
made you want to come back or at least maybe call - call

I listen for the sound's sweet sound
I listen for the time gone by
I listen to the bells' sweet toll
They're ringin' out the souls of men

Up in the tower
toll four times an hour
and twice a day Echo Some Tune
but the range of the mission's
been called into question
most people want naps after noon
The crosses and shadows on stucco and canyons are pretty
but sometimes the sun shines less bright than the moon - Oooh

We listen to the sound's sweet sound
We listen for the time gone by
We listen to the bells' sweet toll
They're ringin' out the souls of men

(instrumental)

Cordelia Mota
came from Some Dakota
but the West Coast was there on line two
My Vertigo Angel
whose feet somehow tangled
in the sand and the beautiful blue
At night you think that you're hearing the creatures who walk in the moon
try to talk but it's just me, the darkness, and you – you

You listen to the sound's sweet sound
You listen for the time gone by
You listen to the bells' sweet toll
You're wringin' out the souls of men

Yeah listen to the sound's sweet sound
Yeah listen for the time gone by
Yeah listen to the bells' sweet toll
They're ringin' out the soul of man

So what can you do? Give me a good first line. (And maybe a second line, if you must change it.) Why French? Because "la guerre" rhymes with "fight there" and I don't know enough French to get a line that says something like "Why are you fighting a meaningless/unwinnable/Pyrrhic war?". But it doesn't have to be French. It does, however, need roughly five syllables. I welcome all of your thoughts and ideas.