My eyes, they opened with the dawn
And once again I was alive.
From the darkness of the stomach
To the haze, which clouds the brain,
A thought came creeping
Like a snake:
Three days today! Three days today!

Silence gathers in the room,
Strangely frozen, not a sound;
Just one ceiling, just one floor,
Just four walls that crowd around.
All seems to be detached from me,
All spectators looking on.
Through the window opposite
The harsh rays of the morning sun
Flood and fall onto my bed,
Sting my face with pointed barbs,
Sharp as my relations' taunts
Hurled against my poverty.
My eyes are open, but today
I am exhausted, Almost dead.
Of all I was a shell remains,
Lying empty
On my bed. My frame reposes
With dead eyes. I search and look
About my room.
Three days today!
Three days today!

In the midday heat I walk
With aimless steps
Along a street,
Along a narrow kind of street;
On both side shops stand in a line.
The only thing I can see
Are board displayed on every shop.
And now I cannot even read them.
People come, and people go,
Passing by me,
But how vague
As if they have no face at all.
The noisy shops
The rough, coarse words,
The jarring sound of radios,
Are echoes coming from afar,
Flooding in from miles around.
All I hear
And all I see
Greets me like some distant dream.
It is, and yet does not exist.
And in the midday heat I walk
With aimless steps
Along a street.
Then at the corner opposite
I see a pipe, I see a tap.
But why then is the water hard?
Why does it stick inside my throat?
It seems as if a blow is thrust
Against my stomach.
Now I feel that I might faint,
And sweat engulfs my body.
I have no strength left.
Three days today!
Three days today!

All around the darkness swells.
I am alone upon a quay.
Before me there are steps of stone
And I lie down upon the steps,
Unable now to raise myself.
I gaze up to the sky above
Served up upon the sky's vast dish,
The moon is shaped like a chapatti
And now my heavy eyelids droop,
The landscape sinks,
The earth revolves.

Once in my house there was a stove,
And the food was cooked there every day.
Chapatties are like shining gold
And dinner's always piping hot.
My eyes are closing.
Will I die?
And what strange things my mother said,
As every day with her own hand
She used to feed me when she spoke.
Who puts his cold hands on my face?
'One mouthful for the elephant;
Another mouthful for a horse,
One more mouthful for the bear.'
Is this death?
Have I Collapsed?
Whatever, it is just as well.
Death or just unconsciousness.
Whatever, it is just as well.
Three days today!
Three days today!