Marianna Kiyanovska is Ukrainian poet, writer, literary critic and translator. Marianna was born in 1973, in the city Zhovkva of Lviv oblast. She studied philology at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Poet currently lives in Lviv. Her poetry volumes include: “Incarnation” (1997), “Crown of Sonnets” (1999), “Mythcreation” (2000), “Love and War” (published with a co-author Mariana Savka, 2002), “Adam’s Book” (2004), “Ordinary Language” (2005), “373” (2014) and other. She has also published a short story collection “Lane by the River” (2008). Marianna translates poetry from Polish and Russian. Her poems are translated into English, Polish, Serbian, Slovenian, Russian and Belarussian languages. She is the awardee of the Literary Award of Nestor the Chronicler (2006) and poetry festival “Kievskie Lavry” (2012).

***

Desert with hungry heads of sand.

Hungry heads that have been rolling after Moses

for such a long time

that even children have been born

and the children of the children

and the fish

put between two slices of dry bread

have gotten stale

The forest rises

from the dried brushwood

of bones that fell

under the sky and under the sun

For that Godly desert

does not let go

it descends

onto some of these heads

that sink down past the horizon

on what is dry

on what is parched

Golden sand

Is spread

on what is living

Desert with hungry heads

of the hungry and the naked.

It is the promised one

Translated by Oksana Lutsyshyna