My wife is dead; I am free !
I can drink to my heart's content.
When I came home without a cent
Her crying was torture to me.

With air pure and a sky that is clear,
I'm as gay as a king could be . . .
This summer recalls the year
That we fell in love -- I and she !

The grave of that wife of mine
Would hardly hold enough wine
To quench the thirst that I've got;
-- and that is saying a lot.

I threw her corpse down a well
With the stones that rimmed it yonder.
She lies asleep where she fell.
-- Shall I ever forget her, I wonder ?

But our sweetest vows of yore
(And nothing annuls such an oath)
And to patch things up so that both
Could be drunk with love as before,

I begged for a rendezvous
At night, in a lonely lane,
She came, mad thing ! -- No ado !
-- We're all more or less insane !

She still was pretty, although
Worn out with working -- while I,
I loved her past bearing; and so
I said : "You've got to die !"

Who understands me ? Has one
'Mong those fellow sots of mine
Ever dreamt in his nights, as I've done,
Of weaving a shroud out of wine?

How could hopeless debauchees
As soulless as things of steel
Ever know the love I feel,
True love with its mysteries,

Its black enchantments and fears,
Its hellish procession if pains,
Its poison phials and tears,
Its rattle of bones and of chains !

At last I'm alone and free !
Tonight dead drunk I shall be;
Without fear or remorse, like a dog
On the ground I shall lie; like a dog

I shall sleep -- as dead men do.
And maybe some skidding truck
Or great cart piled with muck
And stones will cut me in two,

Or crush in my guilty head.
-- But why worry about the Hereafter ?
The thought of it moves me to laughter !
-- To hell with the Devil and God !