The Feeling Of a Single Family

Deep and resilient,
strange and foreign to native fords
I possess an iridescent span
arching toward the peoples.

It is so powerful in me
and on so many posts it stands!
With lightning-and-thunder you hit the essence
and you hear: another thunder in the mountains…

And this second thunder—roars further, to others
it roars, it wants and rejoices,
that there is a steel bridge between nations,
that international friendship is working.

And here you are, having resounded,
you become clear in your unfolding
as if you had gulped the good health
from a well in the steppe.

So having drunk, and drunk, and wiped your mouth
—without any warning or conditions
—you see the first in the last
as you approach a foreign language.

You touch the language—and it seems
to you softer than soft.
Even when a word is pronounced differently
—its essence remains ours.

At the beginning, like this: as if a woeful horseshoe
is being bent in your hands
and then suddenly—language! language!
A foreign one—sounds to me like my own.

Because it isn’t just a language, not just sounds
not just the coldness of a dictionary
—in these, work, sweat, and sufferings are heard
—that sense of a single family.

In these, a forest murmurs and a flower blossoms,
the joys of the people ripple.
One can hear one common thread that runs through them,
from antiquity through today.

And so you borrow this language,
this beautiful and rich one—into yours
And all this finds its basis
in the power of the proletariat.