Nikolay Tikhonov
Our rooms are turned to rolling wagons...

Our rooms are turned to rolling wagons
With wheels that creak on roads of air;
And down below, the moony water
Is playing gently with green hair.

We travel over crystal bridges,
Across the earth, across the sky.
Its red cheek pressed against our windows,
The sun sings out as we roll by.

And every heart's a summer beehive
Blazing with a dark honeyed gleam,
As though we were the lucky first ones
To bend our heads above the stream.

We do not know who leads us onward,
What end our hurrying wheels will find,
But, like a bird set free, the spirit
Darts on a wing that rips the wind.

Translated by Babette Deutsch