Sometimes we seem closer to ashes; we live in patches, fibres.
Fragments of furrows. We dream of empty and ruinous places,
pane-barren windows, windowless houses. The nighttime city resemblesa chasm, pus trickles from the brick walls.
Sometimes I dream of you dead, as white as a sheet. And I could cut you upinto pieces, bury you. If ever, someday, we run out of air, then these seedswill blossom and rot from the inside. Once you swallow them – they will be fibres, patches, fragments of furrows. And sometimes we seem closer to these meanings: I dream of you dead and torn like a sheet. Standing against light
you are sewn entirely from edges; your mouth is full of them.
translated by Ola Bilińska
Joanna Lech, born 1984, poet, author of two poetry books Zapaść (Breakdown, Łódź 2009) and Nawroty (Relapse, Poznań 2010). For the first one she received, among other, a special prize in the 10. Literary Contest held by the Polish Society of Book Publishers. She is a prize-winner of many poetry contests, and published in a variety of literary magazines like “Opcje”, “Studium”, “Tygiel Kultury”, “Ósmy arkusz Odry”, “Arterie”, “Portret”, “Topos”, “Gazeta Wyborcza”, “Czas Kultury”, “Tygodnik Powszechny”. She comes from Rzeszów and lives in Kraków.
photo Magdalena KmiecikOla Bilińska, born 1986, singer, songwriter and translator, student at the English Literature Department of Warsaw University. She is currently writing her MA thesis on the influence of music, sound and performance on the poetry of G.M. Hopkins, T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas. In an attempt to put theory into practice, she writes song lyrics and translates for other bands, most recently for Pustki. Ola sings in Płyny, an urban-folk band from Warsaw, and Muzyka Końca Lata, a group of nostalgic neo-bigbeaters. Her own stage project involving poetry, music and image has started off recently under the name Babadag.