Why do you keep pestering me?
Can’t you all leave me alone!
I’ve got work to do—a lot, and quick.
I’m plaiting the sun’s rays into a whip, a flame-whip,
a whip I’ll lash the world with!
What weeping and wailing there’ll be for me to laugh at,
as the world laughed at my weeping and wailing!
Ha ha ha!
What else is life? You wail, you laugh.
Only death says: shh!
But you know I died once before.
Those who’d drunk my wine mixed poison into my water.
And then what did my killers
do to conceal the crime?
I was no sooner laid out
than they threw themselves weeping on my body.
I’d have enjoyed jumping up to snap off their noses, but
no, I thought, I won’t: I’ll
leave them their noses to appreciate
the rotting of my corpse, and choke on it.
Ha ha ha!
And where did they bury me? Africa.
Couldn’t have better luck,
a hyena clawed me from my grave.
Who ever helped me more than that?
But I tricked even him.
He was ready to sink his fangs in my thigh
and I gave him my heart instead—
it was so bitter it killed him.
Ha ha ha!
Well, the one who does his neighbour
a good turn ends like this. What is man?
Some say: the root of a flower
that blooms in heaven.
But that’s not true.
Man is a flower whose root
is down below in hell.
Or so a wise man told me,
wise idiot! for he starved to death.
Couldn’t he steal? Couldn’t he rob someone?
Ha ha ha!
But why laugh? Am I not a fool too?
Shouldn’t I be crying instead,
crying for the world’s badness?
God himself often does,
with his cloud-eyes, sorry he even created us;
but what use are tears in heaven?
They fall on the earth, on this wretched earth
Where people tramp them down,
and what’s left then?
What are heaven’s tears but mud?
Ha ha ha!
Oh, sky, oh, sky, old soldier sky,
the sun’s medal on your chest
and the ragged clouds are your coat.
And that’s how a veteran is discharged,
with medal and ragged clothes
and thanks for his long service.
Ha ha ha!
And do you know what it means in words
when the quail says: peep-beep?
It means you watch out for women!
A woman draws men into her as the sea draws rivers.
And why? to engulf them.
The female animal is a beautiful animal,
beautiful and dangerous. And love—I have drunk you!—
is a poisoned drink in a golden cup.
One dewdrop of you tastes sweeter
than a whole sea of honey,
yet a dewdrop of you is more fatal
than a whole sea of poison.
Have you seen the sea
ploughed in furrows by storm
for death to be sown?
Have you seen the storm,
that swarthy peasant
with his lightning-goad under his arm?
Ha ha ha!
When the fruit is ripe, it falls from the tree.
Earth, you are a ripe fruit ready to fall.
Well, I shall give it till tomorrow:
no Last Judgment then, I’ll
burrow to the centre of this world
with gunpowder
and blow it all
to smithereens … ha ha ha!