Pendulum

Hard to believe there exists skin like yours—clean and atoned for.
Hard to believe there sometimes exists another skin.

But from time to time it does exist. Something like a stray lash under the eyelid
trying to catch its last breath.

When maggot jaws knock on the door.

No, it’s not your fault, it’s just me switching on unnecessary lights,
the lamps that gather all these insects.

Some boys believe their mothers’ hearts carry scissors,
some believe in roses. Don’t hold it against me then, if on some mornings
I feel like nestling into the cold wall.

Painlessness

Beauty and painlessness: white cherry blossom. Spread across the sky
a string of laundered things.

Labour, never-ending labour of the ploughmen. Blood-shoot eyes
of the horses.

Sun setting in red, slowly—paint spilling over the innocent trees.

And someone other, completely out of place, serious and menacing, playing chess or ping-pong,
an explorer and his spyglass. The author of everything.

Bartosz Konstrat (born in 1977 in Lublin) is a Polish poet, playwright, screenwriter and short story writer. He is the author of five poetry collections. His work has been published in all the major literary journals in Poland, frequently winning prizes, including two nominations for the Silesius Poetry Award. The first English translation of his poetry recently appeared in DIALOGIST.

Dawid Mobolaji is a Polish-Nigerian literary translator, writer and medical doctor based in London. In 2023, he completed the Emerging Translator Mentorship programme at the National Centre for Writing in the UK, and he is a recent American Literary Translators’ Association (ALT) Travel Fellow. His translations have featured in Words Without Borders and Turkoslavia.