Serhiy Zhadan

Quarantine Haven

It’s this distance, the inability to touch hands
and say goodbye to the one leaving the house,
that rhymes with the dark of the lines,
this space that underlines exhaustion,

it’s the impossibility now and here
of being together, the disruptions
in fathoming the course of the celestial spheres,
this lack of warmth, like a lack of weapons,

it’s this greenery forcing its way up from the dark depths,
this sky suddenly burning
this loneliness of ours, just this,
that we’ll remember from this moment on.

Something changed at the end of the winter.
Something broke down in this space, something changed.
That insolence with which the morning fumes
rose above the city and that lethargy,

with which they settled back down,
that trust with which flocks of birds
returned north, that fresh slice
of sky at the border, those remnants of courage,

that glossary of misgivings we learned and recited,
those brawls in the middle of the room.
The world, as we knew it, is forever.
The world knows how to surprise and seduce.

Talk, like back then: it’s beginning to warm,
like beginning to write, the way that it grows
still unnoticed, this language, the way that it was,
still it remains there, lost and the last,

it still has no rhythm, no regrets
about what is unwritten, silenced, cut short,
the alphabet still is emerging from crystal,
like winter breath on a mountain pass,

There still is no subject, time holds
still, foreseeing the narrative,
this is the story that’s telling us,
still emphasizing its rarity.

Like a chance to get out of the dark,
to cross the stream, to get over the waste rock,
to spirit away, to salvage
this nighttime feeling of change,

that, which has broken out, and started,
that unyielding youth of plants,
that absence of anyone at all
who will tell you what absence means,

that light, and what was behind it,
that, which appeared impossible,
that, which was always important,
that, which will be essential.

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