Sviatoslav Zhabotynskyi

When you whisper, no one can hear you...

When you whisper, no one can hear you
in an empty stadium
when a warm wind bends dandelion bodies without shirts
and the mountains that hold inside them the silence of someone old and foolish
and a pinch of stars peering into evening eyes
like steppe lights looking into steppe lights

it was quiet in the empty stadium
and I walked slowly through the grass so as not to wake it
and my children were running and throwing a red toy airplane
and it kept coming back to them every time

I know nothing about this world
I know nothing about this day
because it is too simple —
silence becomes silence in the stadium
when children make noise and throw a red airplane

and then silence, and a few other things, become themselves again
have you seen what children do in an empty stadium?
it is like a dance of planets with rings

then it seemed to me that I was growing like the shadow of a mountain
that I had become rich and could now go to the market
and buy the hearts of all those people who say

I am alive and more alive than on the day I was born
because even the red airplane has gained so much love