Песня о сумасшедшем доме [Pesnya o sumasshedshem dome] [English translation]

I said to myself: Stop writing, -

but the hands begged.

Oh, mummy my home, beloved friends!

I lie in the ward - they squint,

I don't sleep: I am afraid they'd throw themselves upon me, -

However beside me are quiet loonies, incurables.

There are different loonies -

not violent, but dirty, -

They are treated, starved, beat up by the hospital orderlies.

And what is astonishing here:

all go without straitjackets,

And then, what is brought to me, all the loonies gobble up.

Where is Dostoyevsky

with the famous "Memoirs", -

If the deceased could see, how they beat on the doors with their foreheads!

And could tell Gogol

about our wretched life, -

By-god, Gogol would not believe us.

That is torment, - spit on them! -

they are sons of bitches, violent loonies:

All aim to lick me up, - by-god, I've no stength!

Yesterday in the ward number seven

One went off his head for good -

shouted: "Give me America!" and beat the hospital orderlies.

I don't wish for fame and

until I'm not of absolute health -

Reason not yet faded, but that is ahead, -

There is the headphysician - a woman -

if quiet, but insane,-

I say: "! get out off my mind" - she to me, "Wait!"

I wait, but feel - already

I go on the knife's blade:

I forgot the alphabet, of the cases I only remember two

And I ask my friends,

That who were like I and not be me,

Get him to fetch me out of here!

• Artist:Vladimir Vysotsky