Alexander Pushkin
Oh Lord, don’t let me go insane...

Oh Lord, don’t let me go insane.
To starve and beg would be less pain,
To toil and sweat less load.
It’s not that I have set much store
By sanity, that evermore
To part with it I’m loath:

If only they would leave me free,
Oh, how I’d swiftly run to be
By wildest woods and streams!
And I would sing in flaming craze
And lose all senses in a daze
Of wayward, wondrous dreams.

I’d hear the waves in sheer delight
And revel in the happy sight
Of empty, spacious skies;
If free, with all the strength to wield,
I’d match a storm that plows a field
And crushes woods at times.

Too bad if you were deemed insane:
They’d treat you as a deadly bane
And see that you were locked;
They’d hold in chains the wretched fool,
And, like a beast, with taunting cruel,
They’d keep you caged and mocked.

All I would hear all night long
Is not a nightingale’s bright song
Or rustling oaks in vales —
I’d hear my friends scream in the dark,
And nighttime watchmen’s beastly bark,
And screech and clang of chains. 

Translated by Yuri Menis