« On Nowy Swiat (boulevard of Warsaw), I hoped that the sky would speak to us,
And that men would unite the rope of their bitter words
To tear apart the thin web of their dreams;
Naked old men, black souls,
We shake the snowy skin of our memories

Do you know how I prayed to imaginary Gods?
There was a bridge in my blue dream,
An idea that I defended until exhaustion
It was a scriptural country, I took an oath there
A summer dress, a silk of words; to dress men, one
Language; one; let their violent blood frolic, fly down the runway;
Mankind, it seemed to me, was talking to the heavens
In a sad language,

They were cries, wars, yesterday silent gallows,
Lingwe Uniwersala, in Kherson by the Black Sea,
A silent swing
Cut the evening into glaucous strips
This sewer stares at our shadows, gobbles the cobblestones
My creation, you will see, will cross eternity
Tomorrow these children, soldiers, prostitutes
Will need to believe in their slaughtered soul —
Esperanto has wings of hope forged.

A grammar as smooth as Sparrow Hill,
The city of Moscow stammers open vowels
And my impatient duck waits for its brazier
See my chest smoking, death is only a step:
The still spaces of our childhood,
You have seen them grow;
The clouds are growing, the skies are powdering,
Travelers, the storm is coming,
The war approaches. The 20th century sits in the antechamber of impatience

I offer them at my age a last breath,
A sky of cinnabar;
Brother do you see — I find
That life was beautiful; I leave it as a friend
Tomorrow the men I hope, will know how to find this bench;
Let’s get out of here!
Before death chokes my prayer and my shadow