Sytse Jansma was RIXT-poet of the month August 2019. You can read his original Frisian poems of that month here. One of them – Hiroshima – is published here in translation.

Hiroshima, 6^th of August 1945

this poem is an indictment against nuclear weapons
now that I know how narrow pilots, people, countries

that they actually opened the hatch, a ‘little boy’
above playing school children
a dad cycling to work, a waiting mum
on the steps of the main station

that it can be turned so easily
in mere seconds

people, talking with each other,
looking into each other’s eyes full of life,
just saying what they wanted to
say at that moment

into sizzling heaps of flesh

a person, that you’re there,
and then suddenly you’re not

after which, like a delirium,
everything comes down as black hellish rain

on top of the made redundant;
the cups on the table, the toys
in the garden, the clothes
in the closet

and that underneath the rubble
of what used to be a home,
only crushed bones remain

white powder that flies up
at the softest of breezes

© Sytse Jansma
Translation: Trevor M. Scarse

Job Degenaar was RIXT-poet of the month July 2019. You can read his original Dutch poems of that month here. One of them – Girl on her way to the textile mill – is published here in translation.

Foto: Bangladesh Labour Foundation (BLF)

Girl on her way to the textile mill

Some kids never get to be kids
a fact we seemingly concede

for centuries they’ve been used
abused like animals

The world doesn’t stop
when in the early morning

a small girl walks to the factory
to spin the web of her miserly life

unable to extricate herself from it
in vibrant colours

while we on the sunny side of the earth
blindly turn our backs

to the shady sides
like hers

©  Job Degenaar
Translation: Trevor M. Scarse

Meisje op weg naar de weeffabriek

Sommige kinderen zijn nooit kind
daarin schijnen we te berusten

al eeuwen worden ze gebruikt
misbruikt als dieren

De wereld houdt niet op
als in de vroege morgen

een klein meisje loopt naar de fabriek
om het web van haar armzalig leven

waaruit ze niet ontsnappen kan
kleurrijk in te weven

terwijl wij aan de zonzij van de aarde
verblind de rug toekeren

naar schaduwplekken
als die van haar

© Job Degenaar

Yva Hokwerda is RIXT-poet of the month June 2019.
You can read her original Frisian poems of that month here. One of them – Transcycling – is published here in translation.

Transcycling

Whoever sees me cycling

– winding around Sneek the meadows
and the low-lying hay fields in-between,
everywhere
reading the landscape, shouting “bloody cat!”
at the furtive prowling monsters
which cat ladies
love so dearly, petting them in the evening
after which those pesky pookies
go trawling for chicks in the night –

should know: I don’t cry about that.

Whoever hears me cycling
should know: that’s not me.

On that bike
my handlebars are a silent mouse, my saddle
the chair in front of my desk in the office
unable to make any difference, because
nobody dares to sing,
laughter is stifled,
chitchat becomes muted and
words grey like mice-

On that bike
my distress doesn’t hear birds anymore
as ears ring from the silence
of concrete in carefully filled up
pots and pans, too heavy
from the sewn-on ears
to grasp the enclosed contents.

Whoever sees her cycling

behind my sunglasses
– that I’ve already put on at first rays
against flies, of course –

out of a crooked eight,
along an old field filled with new houses
– pretty detached
in rows and a boat
in the canal in front of the house –

should know: I’m not there.

This is my saddle,
but I still have to get home
– you can’t lie down comfortably on only
one herb-filled bank, lounging in the countryside –

and I haven’t found them yet,
the true stewards, the wise women
the people who really know
what has to be done.

Whoever hears me cycling,
may know, it’s not me

because I’m crying
about the playful hares in the land

and I’m rushing in my search
for the Green Dike.

© Yva Hokwerda
Translation: Trevor Scarse