Henk Nijp was RIXT-poet of the month December 2019. You can read the original Frisian poems of that month here. One of them – It doesn’t matter – is published here in translation.
Henk Nijp, ‘As time goes by/De tiid fljocht’, 2017
it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t matter if I shut my eyes
or dig tunnels like a mole,
cultivated mounds with guards every few feet
it’s all the same if I take you with me
along the tow-path to where your vision sets
and to disappear in the scars of the night
it makes no difference if I skip town,
think about what I could have said better
or hide away behind gilded words
it’s no use to scamper behind the fair weather
of prints with serrated edges in mouldy albums
and sing the same old song anew
it is meaningless and search for days past,
collect wearied dreams in the fields of the night
or imagine how it could have been
we cannot turn back the ticking, nor the erosion of time
walk shakily along a tightrope,
can only go forward
© Henk Nijp Translation: Trevor Scarse