Yva Hokwerda was the RIXT poet of the month December 2020. You can read her original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘Introvert days of Christmas (by the old radio)’ – is published here below.
Introvert days of Christmas (by the old radio) Turn your keyboard upside down, come on, strangle that mouse Push all the tables against the walls, throw your chairs out of the house. Let loose all the backbiters, drive every troll back into the thickets, Dance with yourself at unforgiven hours, stretch your weak calves the thickest. Drive the Sugar Berg up the wall, hear his angry bellow Write his logarithmic outcome one by one to zero Hang your prettiest festoons across that meaningless LCD relic Free your inner child while belting out and with a firm dropkick. Jump to the right, to the left, up and down and yell Your home office is no longer your prison cell! In the morning, in the evening, on bulletproof coffee, all that talk You somehow thought your mind spoke out rightly. Not to be a broken clock. Let the net dry, spin your wool with yarn and glow towards fiction Whisper the tone seeking escape; wonder, from strange graphic expression Raise your hands towards the farthest suns at night, gather your own from unframed light Aquiver streams past you what may strike, your sensation is what Earth supplied. © Yva Hokwerda Trans. Trevor M. Scarse