The bedlam house

(психиатрическая больница
Святой Марии Вифлеемской
в Лондоне)

Welcome to the Bedlam house.
It’s turned to be your prison home,
like a mouse in the cat’s mouth,
like the dog’s fantastic bone.

There you’ll forget who you’re,
there reigns only torture and fear;
your sweet home is very far,
and your turnkey’s very near.

There a shirt is the straightjacket,
shoos are slippers on the feet,
there runs the nurses racket
it looks like unpleasant reek.

Alack! here live the devils,
they chortle low at every door,
and the vampires drool when travel
and flap the hands over the floor.

No way to leak out from the jungle
through thick and rusty heavy grades;
the madmen dance tango Milangero
from room to room poised to migrate.
 
Here the premises are full of people,
the prominent ones with known names,
on backs of beds they’re scribbled
and yelled by their roommates:

here are Shakespeare and Byron,
Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, and Drake,
Dandelion, Daisy, Rosy and Charon,
Bob Dylan, Lennon, and Joe Blake.

By other words, the bunch of flowers
is blossoming in the flowers bed;
the time skips up in rushing hours

You welcome home, dear fellow,
asylum from the annoying outside;
it greets you with the bawling “hello” -
with an elation it could provide.
23.02.2021