20.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I want to have children so that there’ll be more of me.
I have to repeat this mantra to myself to believe this. A journey is a mantra. In a journey you don’t have to repeat anything – everything repeats itself anyway. Stations, people, maniacs and thieves, stations, people, maniacs and thieves.
29.
Oh Lord, don’t make me think of the same things all the time.
47.
Autumn’s come and everything looks identical. Covering thousands of kilometres to see this or that is pointless, while this is the same as this or that.
Nature’s defence reaction.
Nature defends itself from emigration. People are made for dying in the same place where they were born.
68.
Rivers differ from trains only in their state of matter. They carry, they move, they stink, and you can’t play near them.
The most sky is reflected in rivers. That’s why rivers have souls.
The longest souls in the world.
93.
The first snow, the first frost. You mustn’t touch metal things with your tongue. Marek, my primary-school buddy, licked the tracks twenty-five years ago. We peed on his tongue to defrost it in time, before an approaching train. Then we all agreed not to say anything to our parents, because parents always shout first, and then they cry. Since then, I always behave as if nothing ever happened.
97.
Our dogs are getting smaller, as they’re getting older. Soon, they’ll be as small as hamsters, small enough to fit them into a pocket.
Our spruces are growing bigger, as they’re growing older. Soon they’ll be so big that we’ll finally be able to think what to do with them.
28.
“Would you believe that all that I’ve written so far is not true?”
“That’s not true.”
“So you wouldn’t believe it? Then I’ll tell you that it is not true.”
“I don’t believe it.”
You cannot fool people with a lie that is only half true.
translated by Ola Bilińska
Filip Zawada, photo Wojtek SienkiewiczFilip Zawada, born 1975, musician, photographer and former poet. He has written three books of poetry: System jedynkowy (1997), Bóg Aldehyd (1998) and Snajper (2004), and played in three bands: AGD, Pustki and, most recently, Indigo Tree. Trained Dogs is his debut in prose. He lives half of the week in the mountains, the other half in Wrocław.
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.