Lyric Add: EPITAPH (Brecht/Weill)

Ballad Singer: Ballad in which Macheath begs all men for forgiveness.

Mac: You fellow men who live on after us
Pray do not think you have to judge us harshly
And when you see us hoisted up and trussed
Don't laugh like fools behind your big moustaches
Or curse at us. It's true that we came crashing
But do not judge our downfall like the courts.
Not all of us can discipline our thoughts-
Dear fellows, your extravagance needs slashing.
Dear fellows, we've shown how a crash begins.
Pray then to God that He forgive my sins.

The rain washes away and purifies.
Let it wash down the flesh we catered for
And we who saw so much, and wanted more.
The crows will come and peck away our eyes.
Perhaps ambition used too sharp a goad
It drove us to these heights from which we swing
Hacked at by greedy starlings on the wing
Like horses' droppings on a country road.
O brothers, learn from us how it begins
And pray to God that He forgive our sins.

The girls who flaunt their breasts as bait there
To catch some sucker who will love them
The youths who slyly stand and wait there
To grab their sinful earnings off them
The crooks, the tarts, the tarts' protectors
The models and the mannequins
The psychopaths, the unfrocked rectors
I pray that they forgive my sins.

Not so those filthy police employees
Who day by day would bait my anger
Devise new troubles to annoy me
And chuck me crusts to stop my hunger.
I'd call on God to come and choke them
And yet my need for respite wins:
I realise that it might provoke them
So pray that they forgive my sins.

Someone must take a huge iron crowbar
And stave their ugly faces in
All I ask is to know it's over
Praying that they forgive my sins.

The "Call from the Grave" never seems complete to me without the following "Epitaph." A great 'goodnight.'

Mannheim/Willett translation. I'll post the The German original later today.
From the libretto published by Stefan Brecht and the Kurt Weill Foundation (file linked by Joe Offer and Wolfgang).