Jan Kleefstra was the RIXT poet of the month November 2020. You can read his original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘On windless days larks don’t bring me to tears’ – is published here below.

On windless days larks don’t bring me to tears not even with the sad confession that the sun now only rises in shuttered eyes how long will wings carry the body through finely meshed rain like before dragging heavy at times shrill tones across the world as a boy I sought beneath the same heavens starved for a meadow bird casting farther than ever a kind-hearted light out ahead of the rain © Jan Kleefstra Translation: Trevor M. Scarse