With pulled-up shoulders, nearly closed eyes,
Almost in a trot and often stuck in the bath mat,
Ugly and awkward bent over nurse's arm,
Goes the idiot every week to the bath.

The damp of from the hot water
Makes him more quiet: white steam....
And with every bit of clothing that goes off,
Encloses him more and more an old trusted dream.

The nurse slides him in the water,
He folds his thin arms over his chest,
He sighs, as with getting away his first thirst
And around his mouth appears slowly a huge happiness.

His worried face becomes empty and beautiful,
His thin feet stand up-straight like pale flowers,
His long, whitish legs, that already were slightly in decay,
Come like birch-stems through the green.

He is in this green water still as unborn,
He does not know yet, that some fruit never gets ripe,
He has not lost the wisdom of the body,
And does not have to understand the things of the mind.

And every time, he is taken out of the bath,
And dried roughly with a towel
And gets pushed in his stiff, hard clothes
He resists somewhat and cries a short time.

And every week he is born again
And cruelly separated of the safe water-life,
And each week his fate is..
Once more to have stayed a scared idiot.