Ne chantez pas la Mort [English translation]

Don't ever sing of death, an unhealty subject.

The mere word casts a chill no sooner it's been said.

Show-business people will foretell your the worst flop

It's a taboo topic for the outcast poet.

Death

Death

I sing of her, and soon, miracle of vowels,

it seems like Death becomes the twin sister of Love.

Death who's waiting for us, Love whose name we call.

And if one doesn't come, the other surely will.

Death

Death

Mine will not have, like in dictionaries,

a shroud over bare bones and a scythe in her hands.

She'll be a redhead lass in her glorious twenties,

wearing a bridal veil, she'll have all that I need.

Death

Death

Two great ocean eyes, an ingenuous voice,

the meek smile of a child over her crimson lips.

The sweet girl will appease on her bared breast

my burnt out eyelids and my old parched face.

Death

Death

A Mozart requiem rather than danse macabre,

wretched accordion waltz in Saint-Saëns museum.

Death is beauty, the quick flash of a saber,

she's the sweet penthotal of both mind and senses.

Death

Death

Don't you go mistaking the effect for the cause.

Death is deliverance, she know that Time itself

steals something from us with each new passing day,

be it a tuft of hair, ivory from our teeth.

Death

Death

She is euthanasia, the ultimate nurse.

She comes on time to put and end to the whole game,

near the wounded soldier in the rice paddies mud,

by the chilled old man in the unheated room.

Death

Death

Time is the horrendous slow ticking of the clock

Death is infinity in her eternity.

But what becomes of those who walk forth to meet her?

As we earn a living, do we have to deserve

Death

Death

Death?

• Artist:Léo Ferré