Fire the stones to heat the bathhouse with clean, white steam;
I’ve missed civilised ways for so long.
Heat will fill me and as I feel it smother me
Burning steam will unravel my tongue.

Fire the stones to heat my bath, my good landlady,
I’ll be perched on the uppermost shelf.
I’ll grow white hot and feel the heat invading me
And I’ll kill all my doubts in myself.

I shall melt to the point of insanity -
Splash cold water and the past is all through;
From the days of the cult of personality
On my left breast shines blue a tattoo.

Fire the stones to heat the bathhouse with clean, white steam;
I’ve missed civilised ways for so long.
Heat will fill me and as I feel it smother me
Burning steam will unravel my tongue.

How much forest and faith has been swept aside?
How much exile and suffering been borne?
On my left breast Joe Stalin’s looking to the right
Where Marinka’s half-profile is drawn.

Oh I earned with my faith so unshakeable
Many years worth of blessed relief
And a life where the dark’s inescapable
Was the price of my stupid belief.

Fire the stones to heat the bathhouse with clean, white steam;
I’ve missed civilised ways for so long.
Heat will fill me and as I feel it smother me
Burning steam will unravel my tongue.

I remember how early that fateful day
"Help me brother!" was all I could yell
As two fine strapping guards took me far away
From a land locked in limbo to hell.

From then on in a landscape of mines and marsh
Gulping mouthfuls of mud with our tears
We’d ink profiles of Stalin upon our hearts
So their beating was easier to hear.

Don’t fire stones to heat the bathhouse with clean, white steam;
I’ve missed civilised ways for so long.
Heat will fill me and as I feel it smother me
Burning steam will unravel my tongue.

My grim story brings chills like an icy blast;
It was steam freed these thoughts from my head.
From the cold mists that blow from a frozen past
I dive into the hot mist instead.

As these thoughts in my skull fought to see the day
It transpired I was branded in vain;
With the swish of a birch broom I’ll beat away
All the signs of dark times that remain.

Fire the stones to heat the bathhouse with clean, white steam;
So with civilised ways I’ll belong.
Heat will fill me and as I feel it smother me
Burning steam will unravel my tongue.