Billie Holiday made the song famous, and as has already been said, it is not the original Hungarian version. It gained a reputation in Europe as a "suicide song", but as the people who've writ here before me have pointed out, it's all anecdotal with no proof of cause.

The American version of the song is a quiet, somber blues number about a woman pining for a dead lover, saying that the flowers she brings will not return him and asking if the angels would mind if she joined him (in death). After the two Hungarian verses, the song shifts from C minor to C major. In one of the first notorious incidents of a record label making commercial changes to art, they insisted and got a third verse, a chirpy happy little coda in which she says it was all a dream and she hopes that the depth of her passion for him doesn't sadden him in any way. Considering this is a woman who quietly told the world where they could all go when they tried to get her to stop singing about lynchings, it's quite surprising, but maybe she didn't have the interest in fighting the music industry on two fronts.

I once roomed with a Hungarian hippie. We're both old men now, but I still remember him hearing Holiday playing from my record player and warning me against the song, saying it was a clear route to suicide. His English was passable but he had to work at it, and though him I learned it was originally Hungarian, and he would not translate the original lyrics for me. He'd been a circus clown back in the old country and had a penchant for paprika and cheap vodka, though not at the same time. He'd come to America for happiness and freedom and good vibes and the modern sounds of Jimmy Hendrix, not the despair and gloom of his homeland.

However, through the magic of these here Internets, I've found what is hopefully a pretty dern good translation. And if they're correct and true, then Holiday never went remotely near enough to the true depths of morbidity and sorrow of the original. I wish I had the chance to talk to that Hungarian feller again - I could show him where America had changed and altered the original to tone it down and offer hope at the end.

Well, anyway, the next time some rock and roll feller with hair like a mop staring at the floor thinks he's cornered the market on angst, here's the translation I found, with the translator's note that the English does not convey the beauty and elegance of the original Hungarian - he's translated it as literally as possible.

"It is autumn and the leaves are falling/ All love has died on earth/ The wind is weeping with sorrowful tears/ My heart will never hope for a new spring again/ My tears and my sorrows are all in vain/ People are heartless, greedy and wicked...

Love has died!

The world has come to its end, hope has ceased to have a meaning/ Cities are being wiped out, shrapnel is making music/ Meadows are colored red with human blood/ There are dead people on the streets everywhere/ I will say another quiet prayer/ People are sinners, Lord, they make mistakes...

The world has ended!"