Are you the one knocking on my door right now,
a bright white page in your hand? Once I open it
the division will be clear – a telegraphic scale
cutting the sky into two unequal halves.
Once I open it, a clock will be standing behind me
with all the surrounding actions that play along with the ticking,
black hard-beaten soil will stoically rise up before me.
Time without land, or land without time, is all quiet.
All the things that move us surface in different places
like birds from shallow graves after some heavy rain
on the Adriatic shore. Blisters hatch like new-laid eggs
on the feet through the scorching sands. Are you the one
knocking on my door right now, a bright white page in your hand?
Translated by Ola Bilińska
Karol GraczykKarol Graczyk, born 1984 in Gorzów Wielkopolski, writes poetry and prose. He has published numerous reviews of literature, film, and music, and has won dozens of literary contests. He has served as the editor of the online art magazine Polskie Kulturalne Podziemie since January 2006, and has also edited several books of poetry. His work has been published in Fraza, Obrzeża, Twórczość, Kozirynek, Tygiel Kultury, Ślad, Zeszyty Poetyckie, Topos, and Pinezka, and read on the radio and television. He has published three books: Oko i oko, Osiemdziesiąt cztery, and Łowy. He is a two-time winner of a scholarship awarded by the mayor of Gorzów Wielkopolski.
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.