My friends, tell me the truth.
I don't know if you're like me,
But I sometimes asked myself:
Is it so difficult to die?

Give me, give me strength
To be somewhat more tough.
When I hear the end of the song,
I ask for a lengthening for good.

In the old time, people were more hard,
They went away without such a ceremony,
They just followed the laws of nature
As the following of seasons.

The one who had death on his teeth
Said: I 've made my man part.
And more than another, I bit into
The apple-pie.

Take my grand-father who was at war
In the mud of Yser.
For a golden cow he wouldn't have talked
About all the guys who were killed by gas.
My other grand-pa, you do know him,
He was Jules, called The Jolly Good Fellow.
He never thought about leaving (this world),
Except, of course, to follow a red-haired woman.

But as for myself, my friends, I'm a coward.
When I read the mortuary page in the newspaper,
Like they says in an old song,
I feel my heart and my bottom getting closed.