Song in the Throat (English)

Tonight, should I die, let it be with song in my throat


but if not tonight
when I die
let them say of me
"he was eccentric"
and mean it

that the theme of my life was
"My Way"
and that I lived every line of it

and should cruel brother love bestow his wicked gift upon me
before I enter immortality
may my song be the Sparrow's
"Je ne regrette rien"

Though to no one shall I ever croak such chords

love's theme is unheard in my country
it was a cruel land where I was born
harsh and cold
albeit picture perfect from without
the bad in the cheese was well concealed within

Old Bertha's pink and white cottage
a fitting epithet to my youth
the half blind one-breasted Wesleyan that she was
kept her house's outsides like a pin in paper
while indoors potatoe eyes yearned for freedom
along meter long trails of desperation
finding fodder in the ruins of an ancient Christmas tree
the fragile balls of which had long since broken on the dusty floor boards

from such a land I hail
but when sister death comes to call on me
it will be in some other place
warmer perhaps
altho I will bring the stone cold grey of my youth with me
for that was the land that raised me
and those were the hapless people who formed me
made me incapable of being loved I fear

and so let them also say of me that I died for love
for want of love
for the sake of love
for the attempts at love
surely they will scar my soul
(lest I have one)
and perhaps my body before I crawl into the dirt

Not unlike Madame Engletyne
I declare
"Amors vincit omnia"
believing no more in it than she in God
so were are brethren
heathens prostrated
shamefully and pointlessly
at the altar of Venus