The Murderer's Wine

My wife is dead and I am free!     And I can guzzle all I want.     When I came home without a cent     Her crying knifed the heart in me.     I am as happy as a king;     The air is pure, the sky divine...     We had such sky another time     When first our love was blossoming!     The awful thirst I feel today     Would need, to get it rightly slaked,     All of the wine that it would take     To fill her tomb; - a lot to say:     I threw her in a well, and then     I even pitched some heavy stones     Out of the well-curb on her bones.     0, I'll forget her, if I can!     Naming those vows of tenderness     From which no power can set us free,     To reconcile us, as when we     Loved with a drunken happiness,     One night, along a road I named,     I begged her for a rendezvous.     She came!-a crazy thing to do!     But more or less we're all insane!     She was still pretty, though a sight     Tired with age and troubles. I,     I loved her too much. That is why     I said to her: you die tonight!     No one can understand me. Crowds     Of loutish drunks, not one could think     In his most morbid nights of drink     Of turning wine into a shroud.     Scum of the earth, this doltish crew,     Like iron mechanisms all,     Never, in winter, spring or fall     Have understood what love can do.     Love with its dark, enchanting pains,     Troupe of anxieties from hell,     Its flasks of poison, tears as well,     Its rattlings of bones and chains!     Now I am free and stand alone!     Dead drunk is what I'll get right here     And then, without remorse or fear,     I'll make my bed on dirt and stone     And sleep as any dog would do!     That cart with heavy wheels, the truck     Loaded with rocks and city muck,     That runaway I welcome to     Come crush my head, or it might well     Cut me in half right where I am,     And I don't give a good god-damn     For God, Communion, or for Hell!