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Like rivers flow into ocean
Like rivers flow into ocean
Unstoppable time's steady motion
And only Love without caution
Survives the time through its Devotion
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To camps my father sentenced was
When I was only four; and I was told that on that date
He asked my mother: "Will you wait ?"
And she replied: "Of course"
I do remember how trucks
With prisoners aboard did drive from prison to Gulag
I stood with mother watching it but could not comprehend
Why father taken was from me and why he waves his hand
I hardly noticed him at all among the other men
My mother pointed him to me and went to cry again
Armed guards were watching this send off and kept the crowd at bay
That early morning in the square on grim and rainy day
And years slowly passed along in loneliness and doom
There were my mother and small me, confined in single room
From day to day just two of us, just two and no one else ...
All relatives and former friends *forgot* our address
When they would spot Mom on the street - they'd cross to other side
From wife of *enemy of state* they were quite quick to hide
In kinder garden and at school knew too who's son I am
And I could read it in their eyes - they hate me and condemn
My mother, trying find a job, in vain knocked closed doors
Her applications were denied after background check
Being engineer by degree she ended mopping floors
The pay just covered buying food when she was coming back
"Mom, could I have a bike ?" - I asked when I was eight
She said: "Perhaps the other year, we need to learn to wait"
And we kept waiting, she - for Dad, and I to get my bike
When I was nine Dad didn't come but I got what I like
