We have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night…*
Did clouds reflected in the Volga
draw your attention to the heights,
and did wild swans,
migrating southward,
stir your first desire for flight,
so that you looked up, and wondered
what was hidden from your sight?
Who knows what children really see?
Who can read their fantasies?
Tell me that as yet we leave
no bloody footprints on the stars,
no battlefields to scar the Moon,
and no conspiracies on Mars;
there will be as clear a dawn
as Chaika's pilot gazed upon,
there will be cosmic nursery-rhymes
to nourish future children's minds:
"We shall skate on rings of Saturn,
fish Europa's gleaming ice;
as we dream beside the Volga,
clouds will sing us lullabies…"
Always I am reaffirmed
by gazing at the skies…
*Epitaph of two amateur astronomers