Among the melting candles and evening prayer,
Among the trophies of war and the peace time bonfires,
Lived the bookish children, not knowing battle,
Pining away in their small catastrophes.

To children, age and life
are eternally vexing
And we fought until scratched,
to death insults,

But our mothers patched
our garments in time,
While we devoured books,
drunk from the lines.

Those locks of ours stuck to the sweaty foreheads,
Phrases filled the pits of our bellies with sweet heaving,
And the scent of struggle turned our heads,
Flowing down from the yellowed pages.

And we, not knowing war,
tried to grasp,
Mistaking a wail
for the war cry, -

The mystery of the word "order",
The purpose of borders,
The meaning of assault
and rattle of war chariots.

In the bubbling kettles of gone pillages and turbulences,
There is so much nurture for our little minds!
In our childish games we placed our enemies
In roles of renegades, cowards, judases.

We didn’t rest
until the evil ceased,
We swore our love
to the fair dames,

And reassuring our friends
And loving our fellow men
We led ourselves
into the hero roles.

But you can’t hide away in dreams until the end of time,
The play’s day is short, for there is so much pain around!
Try to soften the clench of the palms of the dead,
And take over the weapon from the toil-worn hands.

See, seizing
a still warm sword,
And clothed in armor -
What is what, what is what!

Find out who are you -
A coward,
Or the minion of fortune,
And taste the real battle.

And when a wounded friend will fall before you,
And you will scream in grief over your first loss,
And when you will be left at your wit’s end
Because not you, but he was killed, -

You will see what you’ve learned,
Recognized, found out
By the grin of the guise -
That’s the death barred grin!

Lie and evil - look at them -
How crude are their faces,
And always left behind
Are carrion crows and coffins!

If hewing your way through with father’s sword
You didn’t forget the salty tears,
If in a fiery battle you felt the how and why of things,
Then you read the right books!

If you didn’t eat a measly piece
of meat from the knife,
If, your hands folded,
you watched from your own spot

And didn’t battle
a scoundrel, a tyrant,
Then you were in life
for no reason at all!