We, the wives of a few bureaucrats,
Turn our faces to you,
O Lord, save us,
Devastated in relaxation are we,
Wives of a few bureaucrats,
O Lord, our husbands are
Divers in the bottomless sea of files
(They alone know what they gather) ,

We are destitutes through family planning:
Time rolls by crushing us.
We, the wives of a few bureaucrats,
From dawn to dusk
On the verge of some noble thought
And the faded pages of fashion journals,

Movie advertisements in dailies,
And nude pictures of health and beauty,
And the sensation of a nearly achieved greatness,
Encroachment of fat in the valley of the waist,
The swelling of the belly, the double chin
Panicky at the breast's decline:

O Lord, we gasp in the mausoleum of fat,
We, the wives of a few bureaucrats.
Our store is full of provisions,
Surplus pocket money in the fold of our pillow,
Helene Curtis in glass drawers,
Anne French milk, astringent, deodorant,

Hand lotion, Revlon,
Christian Dior and Rubenstein —
Obviously middle-aged compensation
From our husbands
For the shortage of warm love.
Proud of the salute of orderlies,
Our husbands are always in the office,

Obstructing others' promotions,
Rejecting applications,
Appending a few dignified signatures
Even on getting back home.

Jealous at the friend's promotion,
Profit and loss of business run under another's name —
And the telephone
The telephone
The telephone.
The Revlon on our lips,
The foundation cream on our face,
The careful beauty spot on our foreheads grow dusty.

The evening invitation gets old and stale.
And then, O Lord,
Thoughts of the second man
Make us restless for a moment.
The old lover is married.
Young adolescents' aunt,
The subordinates' mother,
Granny in the sister's home,
And the evening invitation old and stale.
On the pages of the British magazine
Maggie's amour, Jacqueline's hymn,
Flirtations of Liz Taylor, BB's bust,
And Marilyn's suicide
And suicide
And suicide
And the evening invitation,
And the evening invitation,

And then, O Lord,
Our body insipid at night,
The bloodless moon at the window;
The used body — snoring husband
Sleepless night
And tranquilizer.
O Lord, with no other means left
We turn our faces to you;

Give us some work, mirror in vanity bags,
Foundation and lipstick, and social service.
Savage criticism of kindergartens.
Or the front row seat in ladies' clubs,
Or inauguration of the child clinics
By virtue of our husbands' ranks. We, the wives of a few bureaucrats,
Ask you, O Lord, to give us some work, anything at all
That we may throw ourselves into its abyss.