Город детства [Gorod detstva] [English translation]

Somewhere is a town, quiet like in a dream

Covered with a fluid breast-high dust

In the slow river water looks like glass

Somewhere is a city in which it's warm

There we passed our distant childhood

In the night I hasten out of home

I ask for a ticket at the station's ticket office

Maybe at first for a thousand years

Give me a train ticket1 to childhood

The saleswoman replies quietly: "There are no tickets"

There are no tickets

Well, mate, how to reach back to it?

Where else to ask for a road to childhood?

But it's possible, except that it's only sometimes

We can get there only in our memories

In that town tales are alive

Crazy winds call me to their side

There we gave way to madness from time to time

Pine-trees raising to the sky, reaching the sun's abode

There winter noiselessly wandered along the snowdrifts

A remote song in our fate's course2

Tender town - I thank you

We won't get there, don't wait, it would be in vain

There are other roads on this planet

We became adult, believe us, and forgive us.

1. "плацкартный билет" is a ticket in railway cars with open berths instead of compartments (reverso) 2. the word "course" is an addition on my part, it literally says "in our destiny"