Writings and translations

The Eternal Question

Explorers of space posed this question to me:
'Is the adventure worth our odyssey?
Or love of your wife and father's advice
Are where the life's eternal meaning lies?

How to live honest, not fall to vanity's call,
Reach distant stars yet not lose our souls at all?
Man needs man, not fragments of steel,
Not hollow trinkets but bonds that are real --
A horse and freedom to roam earthly steppes,
And paths to follow our forefathers' steps.

We've reached the most distant corners of space,
We've tamed the atom, its quantum embrace,
We've pushed every boundary of what people can do,
But was this exodus the plan to pursue?

Here we dwell at Proxima Centauri's gate,
Gazing at darkness, contemplating our fate,
With elusive hope to glimpse our Sun --
The way home has been forever undone.

So we raise our children beneath alien skies,
We tend our vineyards where no earthbird flies,
We watch ancient tapes that slowly decay,
Of the blue world we left far away.
We love, we labor, we learn, and we pray.'

From dusty shelves I drew an ancient tome,
Whose wisdom speaks to those far from home:
"Generations rise, and generations fall" --
These Biblical truths still govern us all.
Ecclesiastes knew: "omnia vanitas,"
His truths echo from future to past.

Pavel Kiparisov