Morts les enfants

The lyrics present a world where children die because of war, poverty, pollution, hatred, fear, and careless driving. The repeated refrain about a party at an embassy contrasts with these deaths: while powerful people gather and divide up the world, ordinary people suffer. The mood grows from anger and accusation toward personal despair, as the speaker feels that his own childhood hope has died too.

Several images make this contrast vivid. A child dies “in silence” on a city pavement, suggesting that suffering is ignored. The “garden” and “river” stand for a peaceful world the speaker once imagined; now the garden has become a jungle, and the river carries tears. “The child who lived in me” is not necessarily a literal child, but a way to describe the speaker’s lost innocence and belief in human brotherhood. The final image of a grenade and ruins turns that grief into violence.

The song’s criticism is broad and deliberately forceful: it points toward leaders, institutions, industries, and individuals, without offering one single cause for every death. The ending may suggest that prolonged suffering can make even a person who once hoped for peace take up a weapon. But it is also possible to hear this as a warning about despair, rather than approval of revenge.