Spring

This spring the world is new and different;
More lively is the sparrows' riot.
I do not even try expressing it,
How full my soul is and how quiet.

I think and write not as I did before;
And with their song of earth, entire
Freed territories add their mighty voice,
A booming octave in a choir.

The breath of spring within our motherland
Is washing off the winter's traces,
Is washing off black rings and crevices
From tear-worn eyes of Slavic races.

The grass is everywhere in readiness;
And ancient Prague, in murk and smother
Still silent, soon will be awakening,
One street more crooked than the other.

Morave and Czech and Jugoslavian
Folk-lores in spring will rise and blossom,
Tearing away the sheet of lawlessness
That winters past have laid across them.

It all will have the haze of fairy tales
Upon it, like the gilt and dazzle
Of ornaments in Boyar chambers and
On the cathedral of St Basil.

A dreamer and a half-night-ponderer,
Moscow I love with all my power.
Here is the source of all the wonderful
With which the centuries will flower.