Save me from madness, God, I beg.
No, I prefer the beggar’s bag,
Prefer to starve and toil.
And not as if I praise my head,
And not as if I were not glad
To part with mind at all.

If I were left alone and free,
Oh, how fast I then would flee
To wildness, thick and dim!
I would sing songs in flaming fits
And lose myself in fumes and bits
Of mixed and lovely dreams.

And I would listen to the sea,
And, full of happiness, would see
The heavens’ empty flesh;
And then I would be strong and free
Like whirl that could dig up a lea
And leave a forest smashed.

Alas! The man whose mind is lost,
Would be as awful as a curse,
And very soon be locked,
They’d put the fool in chains in rage,
And, as a wild beast, through the cage
They would you tease and mock.

And in the night I would attend
Not to the nightingale’s clarinet,
And hum of woods and plains –
But to the cries of my inmates,
And oaths of the jailers-rats,
And squeak and ring of chains.

Translated from Russian by Yevgeny Bonver, August 1995, Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, June 1996.