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: "I 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!