We Went Out Of Our Minds With The Easy Life Poem by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

We went out of our minds with the easy life,
Wine from morning on, hungover by evening,
How can I keep this idle gaiety,
Your blush, O drunken plague?

An agonizing ceremony in a handshake,
Nocturnal kisses on the streets,
While the currents of speech grow heavy,
And lanterns burn like torches.

We wait for death, like the fairytale wolf,
But I'm afraid that the first to die will be
The one with the anxious red mouth
And the forelock covering his eyes.