We practice again and again,
what to say and what not to say,
going on our way
to meet the Kremlin Tours,
Red Square,
full of lonely, fierce crows,
eyed us without any mercy:
Do you believe in tears, Moscow?

We approached the grey building,
blond secretary
calmly pronounced her phrase:
Have a seat. Your names will be called.
We were waiting...Suddenly,
we heard a scream
beyond the exit door,
and there she was - woman in black
on the parquet floor.

It was her Hour of Judgment:
Her only son was brutally killed
a few years ago
in the Afghanistan mountains.

She cursed the War
like a wounded beast,
stretching out her hands in the air,
no one in the room
dared to look at her eyes,
when she was chanting her grief,
calling her beloved son by name,
and no one dared to look at her eyes.

She was running out of tears,
her face became cold like a stone,
the woman in black left the room
and disappeared into thin air.

Blond secretary calmly explained:
She comes here at 10 A.M. every day
to cry out her pain,
which rots in the present forever,
she is insane.

For a minute,
we forgot our personal misery.
We were thinking
about the ongoing War and a mother,
who lost her mind because of her son,
brutally killed in the Afghanistan mountains.

At the end of the day
we were sitting
in our cheap and nameless motel,
the silence was unbearable.

You turned on the radio,
someone was singing the song
"Moscow Nights".
You told:
Only Eugeny Belyaev knows,
how to sing those lyrics property.