Sve bih dao da mi zdravlje vrate
Mara i Lole · Other Songs - Mara i Lole
sve do danas kad sam obolio
sada mi je zdravlje naruseno
k’o u jesen sijeno pokoseno
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Sad bih dao cijelo imanje
da se vratim u prijasnje stanje
ono vrijeme kad se jela proja
al' je bila zdrava dusa moja
Trebalo je samo napred ici
malu djecu na noge podici
dok napravi zgrade i dvorista
od mog zdravlja ne ostade nista
Sto sam kucu pravio do neba
sad mi samo jedna soba treba
na sprat kuce ne mogu da stignem
jer se jedva iz kreveta dignem
Svi su moji od mene daleko
moja dusa puca poprijeko
nema lijeka ni doktora brate
sve bih dao da mi zdravlje vrate
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Sve bih dao da mi zdravlje vrate
“Sve bih dao da mi zdravlje vrate” (“I’d Give Everything to Get My Health Back”) begins with the hard education of illness. The narrator says he did not understand when he was younger; only after becoming unwell did he grasp what health had meant. The image of a life cut down like autumn hay turns the loss into something agricultural and irreversible: the field still exists, but the crop has been felled.
The refrain imagines trading an entire estate to return to an earlier condition, to the days when people ate simple food and the soul was healthy. That nostalgia is more than longing for youth. It suggests that well-being cannot be bought back once it has been taken for granted. The song’s measure of wealth changes: property becomes expendable, while the ordinary capacity to live without pain becomes priceless.
Mara i Lole’s folk setting gives the testimony a plainspoken gravity. I found no substantial independent review of this track, so its critical reception remains unknown. “Sve bih dao da mi zdravlje vrate” is a song of hindsight, but its warning is directed at listeners still well enough to ignore it. It asks what we value only after it is gone—and how little material wealth can do to restore it.