Vsevolod Rojdestvensky

Being to dawns and clouds blind,
We have not marked our neighbors dear,
And spent – on trifles, we could find –
All left to us from our first years.

Quite deaf, we changed our life and place,
Wrote some formulas and canons,
But couldn’t recognize e’en selves
Amidst the images Earth summons.

But Mother always Mother is –
Her love’s the endless one and clever:
She taught us to read all the things
Which could be seen or heard wherever.

And understanding by small bits
Her great and never-dying science,
We’ve, only to our latest years,
Believed in her high-proved license.

Just then we come to all her grace,
To all her wills and regulations –
To melt the last of our days,
In her green-colored domination.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October 27, 2004