Andrej Khadanovich was born in 1973 in Minsk. He is a poet and translator. He teaches the world literature in the Belarusian State University and runs the Translation Work- shop in Belarusian Collegium. He has published 10 poetry collections. He translates poetry, sung poetry, prose and drama from various languages and has edited and published dosens of translated books. His poetry is translated into 15 languages, including Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Slovak. Andrej himself translates poetry from French, Ukrainian and Polish. He has translated some texts of Georgian contemporary poets. In 2008 – 2017 he was the president of the Belarusian PEN.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

A child,
I climb up on grandma’s stove bench, and my arms drown, up to my shoulders, in the black sea
of sunflower seeds
she’s looking to dry.

The seeds dried surprisingly fast and my girlfriends
weren’t shy to nibble on them
in front of me

and the hulls stuck to their lips but didn’t kill
the desire to kiss.

I’d take the hull off
lightly, like a landmine clearer because the first touch
could easily be the last.
I longed for it to continue while new seeds
were drying by the stove.

Since then I’ve come to realize that my sunflowers
aren’t worse than Van Gogh’s and my pumpkins,