The doctors vanished in the haze. My fever’s in full bloom. I’m like a furnace, and my face heats up the room. All of a sudden I feel brave and angry. I charge right at the screen. So that the tech can barely save his x-ray machine. I’m coughing blood. I’ll drown all of my country in this seizure! An order: "The table’s up, let’s roll! Begin the anesthesia!" My shirt is quickly ripped to shreds; with ice my neck is bound. My bloody mouth is grinning red, just like a circus clown. I tell myself to bleed some more, to try and press my luck. I spit so much blood on the floor that someone will get stuck. There’s no stop once I begin: I’ll bleed around the planet! But they pull up a tub of tin and trap my blood flow in it... I can no longer hear my scream or recognize the nurse. The dizzying gas enters my bloodstream, like vodka, only worse. The doctors’ faces fade away into a colored plaid, But I’ve convinced them I’m OK, at least inside my head. I jerk and cough. The blood runs hot. The needles find their route, Injecting artificial blood... I cannot cough it out. Until my anesthesia sets, hey, doc, lend me your ear! I haven’t said my last words yet; for you I have them here: "Godspeed to all your cutting crew! Get started and relax! "These words I spoke were not of you, but of some other quacks!" I’m on the edge of the abyss, caught in a wobbly stillness. And my whole history is this, this history... this history of illness! I was as healthy as a horse back in the days bygone. So when the matters called for force, I could break anyone. I walked and whistled, high and low; my life was neatly planned. But now under the knife I go: "You’ve done it now, man!" "You have no reason to feel down!" the doctor showed some interest. "Truthfully, everyone around has got a History of illness."                         Eternally all people ail. They’re fragile and they’re frail. From the first air they inhale, they walk the sickly trail. The first man, Adam, he was ill (he only hid it all), And the Creator was on pills, when he designed our world. "You’ll make a full recovery. Do not be sad! Depression only hinders. Alas! Your country’s history is a history of illness!" He did the apple trick to Eve who played near. The Snake was also sick with megalomania. We’re all diseased to some degree with every plague in nomenclature, And all of mankind’s history is medical in nature. Humanity accelerates, in uselessness relentless, Enjoying pain, enjoying hate, its history of illness.
© Vadim Astrakhan. Translation, 2013
© Vadim Astrakhan. Performance, 2014