Don’t say it aloud,
don’t let the coastal span of another utterance
roll off your tongue.
It’s a subtle, innate, human skill
of non-articulation, omission, awkwardness,
concealing something light behind your heart,
something so light, so sweet, so unshareable,
this wild generosity of not burdening anyone
with things that might make their face twitch.
And then speech starts, like the start of a cold,
it warms your lungs, and the fever sets in,
and since early August anxious people have been wandering around
glowing from within with this mysterious light.
Serhiy Zhadan
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk