Hautalinnut [English translation]

Do you remember as I did

Or do you remember otherwise

A park of birches dead

Mirrors of empty rooms

Did you feel like I did

Or did you feel otherwise

The pleading gaze of the collapsed statue

Did you see it as I did

Or did you see otherwise

Roaming birds

Sleeping on the skies, they were

Did you believe it as I did

Upon thyself did you believe

On thy body's shrouded arches

The depths of thine eyes

Yet the fountain is dried

And branches above are dead

Were you there with me

Or was I alone after all

Desolate alleys of midday

Grey was their whitewash

Was the same thine fear,

Or some odd, of your own,

Soldiers' march

Screams and bitter smoke

A figure in a window,

perhaps thine own,

turning away,

perhaps denying it all

Did you hear the screams,

or did you stop your ears

As night moved away

those people, like it's own

Now the fountain is dried

And branches above are dead

Those strange flowers did you smell

Unless you were brazen

Old Alexei tied to a chair

And shot

The endless squares did you walk

with the same sodden shoes

Empty squares

Posters wet and hanging

Was my embrace warm

Or were you shivering just from the cold

Old platane shadow

A letter from my lost brother

And the bread's dry crust

Wasn't it so sweet

On the fourth morning

The graves were yet empty

Now the fountain is dried

And branches above are dead

Did you weep our sorrow

Or did you have your own

Laugh and love forbidden

Some lonesome childhood

And the same silence it was

Or did you hear a tune unheard

In a blazing spring day

Above a dying city

Did you promise the same

Seeing the same vision

High and heavy

Raining defiance and longing

Did you flee, as we agreed

Here far away, to this place,

Empty church's tower, fragile,

A train brings you

Now the fountain has dried

And the branches above are dead

Is your spirit still afire

And our fire a common flame, flame