The First of May Stands as spring’s finest hour Where morning unfolds in the veil of gentleness And the pulse of the streets grows into optimistic cadence Greetings, my lively native land Today you are adorned in holiday’s brightest hues Peace Is the first greeting to a neighbor on the way to work Is the glow of distant windows at the descent of evening Is the smile of children under a sky vast as the marble sea Profoundly calm, luminously serene Such is the brightest atmosph

Sitting at the bottom of a bottomless pit In complete darkness with little air. Silence so thick it wraps around you Gloom so great it almost vibrates. Sinking in the moving sands of a desert. The desert of doubts and desperation. So hot and dry and empty. Pain so great it echoes. Drowning in a sea so deep, An ocean of endless tears. Waives of loneliness unending, Sadness so great it kills.

The first road through the universe was paved We flew beyond blue expanses in victorious stride Through the longest and most arduous path ever made The daring call of restless youth’s pride The constellations shone in brilliant light In Gagarin’s spring-awakened dawn And the flight continues in its might Through the people’s immortal labor carried on For a hundred centuries such a dream was sought And ours the first to fulfill humankind’s desire That soaring comet’s furious a