We will gather around the table one May,
Our glasses with crimson wine will be filled,
There’ll be festively merry songs all the day,
Songs to drown out the glasses' silvery trill.
With a riot of flowers our board will be decked,
And our beauties will crowd around us to say,
As our brows with their lips they fleetingly peck:
Welcome home, our heroes, on Victory Day!
Here and there we will miss a familiar face,
“Twasn’t everyone lived to see this great day.
To their memory our very first glass we will raise,
To the comrades-in-arms who fell on the way.
So much greater our joy to see those who returned,
Who matured in battle, in fire grew strong,
When this joy, not the wine, makes our heads spin and turn,
We will, naturally, sing our favourite songs.
Then we will, one and all, set our glasses aside,
We will rise from the table as one single team.
We will hitch up our sleeves, to the plains we will stride
Where the blood of our friends had but recently streamed.
There the gutted villages must be revived,
There the roads are shambles of ruin and decay...
Let the powerful tractors again come alive,
In our hands let the hammers merrily play.
Let the ruins be replaced by sunny bright homes
Let the victors display how to work in style,
In the sweat-soaked fields that we have sown
Heavy ears of corn will go up in smiles!
October 1943