I never put my faith in mirages,
Nor packed my suitcase for the Promised Land:
A treacherous world gobbled up my teachers
And spewed them out somewhere near Magadan.

But looking down from on high on the sinners,
I wasn’t so different from them in the end;
For Budapest did not char me to cinders,
And Prague didn’t blow my heart to shreds.

We raised some fuss, in real life and in theatre;
We were just kids, we didn’t have a clue!
But soon they noticed us and took our measure.
Hey! Stand with us, or we’ll beat you black and blue...

But we managed to catch the whiff of danger
Long before the great freezes began;
Clear-sightedness swanned up like a streetwalker
To turn the key upon our inner man.

And although we were not culled in midnight raids,
We also lived with our eyes on the ground;
We too are children of Russia’s black decades,
We also drank her bitter vodka down.