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When I sleep, a yellow light
Blinds me and I’m groaning,
“Get away, dark painful night!
Come, clear sunny morning!”
But the morning is an ill,
Wrong and boring comer:
I just smoke or drink some swill
On an empty stomach.
Jerks and bums in cheap saloons
Feast for no reason —
It’s a paradise for goons,
But for me — a prison.
In the church I hear sweet songs,
There even gold looks shabby...
Well, the church is also wrong,
It’s not such as must be!
Wheezing, up the hill I lurch,
Being tired and harried —
On the top I see a birch,
And below — a cherry.
Wish the hill were ivy-twined,
Then I’d be in clover;
Wish another joy I’d find —
But it’s wrong all over!
I keep running on and on
Through the field with daisies —
There’s a light while God is gone,
And the road that mazes.
It goes forward through the wood
Full of witches lurking
To the end where’s nothing good
But a hangman smirking.
Somewhere steeds in a slow mode
Dance without desire.
All is wrong along the road,
And the end is dire.
Nor the church nor the saloon —
None of things is holy!
All is wrong beneath the moon,
Wrong and quite appalling!
Wrong and quite appalling!
1967.
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