I will, too, die someday. Someday, all of us, we get to perish.
How shall I arrange to be stabbed in the back with a knife? -
who is murdered, he gets to be treated to Heaven and cherished:
people revel the dead ones, forgetting of those alive.

I’ll impressively fall, splashing mud (quite theatric and dappled),
bolting my soul to Heaven: on a galloping sleigh, through abyss.
In the Garden of Eden, I’d gather pink paradise apples.
But the Garden is guarded; and wardens - they shoot and don’t miss.

I’ve arrived, and I looked: it is morbid, this darkness of ravens -
just a barren wasteland, just a nothing - a void, stripped of trees.
In the peak of this void, stood the huge, iron-cast Gates of Heaven,
and a crowd of dead souls was waiting in front - on their knees.

My steeds snort, hiss and neigh. After all, horses are only mortal:
they would jump to the side at the sight of a life that’s been reft.
A gray-haired old man came and pulled the Gates’ iron-cast portal,
he kept grumbling and sighing. He gave up and, finally, left.

But there were no groans, no anguish touched careworn features
of the sapped kneeling crowd accustomed to every harsh thing:
"It is peachy in here! We get to be greeted by preachers!"
Everything came around. The Crucified crested the ring.

 
 
 
 

I knew that grumbling man: seen his face every time in each chapel -
he’s Saint Pete, a disciple. And I am a dimwit to steal...
Here is the famed Garden: a glut of these frozen apples.
But the Garden is guarded, and wardens shot me - I am killed.

We all long for more frills... But for which frills I tried and I grappled? -
All I wished for were friends and a wife who’d remember and grieve.
Let me gather and bring them a shirt-full of paradise apples...
But the Garden is guarded, and wardens shoot those who leave.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

I am urging my horses and cracking my whip at the pebbles!
Through this dreary abyss: through the rot, through the coldness and vice,
I am still coming back! I am bringing a shirt-full of apples:
you were waiting for me to return even from paradise.