Three poems by Serhiy Zhadan

"Of all literature"

Of all literature
and all language
Iʼm most interested in words
used to address
the dead.

What if someone spoke a sentence
that could stir the sonic field of death?

Listen to me,
you—deprived of the sweet receptors of song.
Listen to me now,
hear my whisper,
distorted by the acoustics of nonexistence.

Listen to me,
you—marked by dialects, like scars throughout your lives,
you—whose throats were scratched since childhood by the burning needles of the alphabet,
you—singers who could imitate bird calls.

I know—it is unfair
you cannot answer
the voices calling out to you from the mist today,
you cannot say anything to defend yourself,
you cannot protect the vacant land of night
between memory and expectation.

But language is important even after death,
like the deepening of a riverbed,
like the rise of heat for the first time in autumn
in a great home.

The only rule—grow roots,
break through.

The only chance—reach out for a branch, grab hold of a voice.

There is nothing else.
No one will remember you for your silence.
No one but you can name the rivers nearby.

You who are only echoes,
you who are filled with silence,
speak, speak now,
speak as grass,
speak as frost,
speak as conductors of music.

"In the summertime"

In the summertime everyone wants to feel the cool touch of the river.
The birds in summer gardens are crazy and unrestrained.
Two trees stand on the hill, facing each other
like two people who once shared the same hospital room and now meet again.

The summer is so endless that everything stands still.
The moon rises in the evening over the roadside thorns.
The days are so long that when dusk finally arrives
everyone revels in the dark and doesnʼt sleep.

The sky is like a teenager with textbooks, sorting out the stars,
arguing with the birds, as if they were trespassing.
The leaves are motionless, the branches silent
as one tree listens to the other.


"This is a good opportunity to be thankful"

This is a good opportunity to be thankful
for being born in the twentieth century,
for having the chance to see
the borderline of history,
for the chance to walk through crowded train stations
that slowly empty and then fall silent.

You can be thankful for the opportunity
to write letters by hand,
then hopelessly depend on the postmanʼs leisurely delivery,
only to experience the slow motion of the calendar,
its female sensibility.

Give thanks for that particular feeling of time
measured by how many pages youʼve read
each night.

Be thankful for space,
firmly outlined in pencil, like a button
held tight in a childʼs hand.

Those who lived through wars and great upheavals,
stand by windows, parting with
their troubles, as if parting with a dying neighbor.

They notice who lived longer,
who won the doubtful honor
of watching their enemyʼs funeral.

The bright children of the twentieth century
dissolve in the dark, like railroad workers
on a night shift.

In the morning the train arrives at the station.
Dawn greets all those who got off along the way,
tempted by a lamplight behind the trees.
Dawn greets those who exit at the last stop.

Only joy is left behind,
and despair.
The damp mist entwines with
the careless word.

Stay with me, music of the street.
Stay with me, this feeling of victory.
This feeling of justice.
This rhythm.


Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps

Reprinted from How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems by Serhiy Zhadan; translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps; foreword by Ilya Kaminsky. Published by Yale University Press in the Margellos World Republic of Letters series in October 2023. Reproduced by permission.