I never believed in mirages, Nor packed my suitcase for the coming paradise. A sea of lies devoured my teachers And cast them out beside Magadan1. But staring at ignoramuses from above, I differed from them very little: Budapest left no splinters And Prague did not explode my heart. And we caused a stir in life and on the stage: - We’re still muddleheaded little boys! But soon they’ll notice and appraise us. Hey! Who’s against? We’ll give him a thrashing! But we knew how to sense danger Long before the beginning of the cold. With the shamelessness of a tart, clarity came And bolted up our souls. And though the executions didn’t touch us. We lived, not daring to raise our eyes. We arc also children of Russia’s terrible years - In us the stagnant hard time poured its vodka.
1 Magadan is a port city on the Sea of Okhotsk built by the prisoners of the Kolyma River camps an administrative center of the camps.
 
© Albert Todd. Translation, ?