leśmian song
the river is sticky like raspberry syrup, smelling of summer
we wonder at our tastes, we savour and shamelessly enter each other while darkness is growing and spreading like mushrooms and moss in the valley but this is all fever
you touch me to check if I wither away
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yesterday on the conveyor belt I saw you
me – a depressive yet faithful woman worker
and then god or the quality controller
whispered into my ear –
you
him
it’s a faulty series
abacus
a white pregnant she-cat melts into the snow
she bore near seven kittens
I counted two days ago
translated by Ola Bilińska
Katarzyna Zdanowicz-Cyganiak, born 1979, author of poetry books (including Szkliwo [Glaze], Jak umierają małe dziewczynki [How little girls die], deadline) and a study on Maria Komornicka Who’s afraid of Maria K.? Art and exclusion.
Twice granted a scholarship of the Ministry of Culture.
Winner of many literary prizes.
She’s from Białystok, living in Silesia.
Ola Bilińska, 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.