***

 Saturday morning - our hearts are broken again,
you and i discuss our perfect love:
what would each of our better halves be like?
the blanket over us is like the skin of a crocodile,
our room is carried by a black river before our eyes,
we swam to the middle and did not return:
behind the door, the bitch birthed puppies for the fifth time -
one of us will go out and we'll both go crazy.
water will come in - we are waiting for others:
the all-pervading sounds of life,
I think I'm still talking
with a person who has returned from the war.

we have a separate breakfast, a fragile truce,
you know, a woman in my skin - her story is special:
a gun and a guitar lie under her bed,
when the war begins, she takes the first
during the armistice alternately uses both,
we sit, our day mixed with fire
today you don't have a guitar and to hell with it!
you and I are still quite distant from the front line.

the evening is approaching - we are waiting for others:
woman in my skin
woman in your skin -
the common denominator

of an ethylated peace.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj