December 2022

Syds Wiersma was RIXT Poet of the Month for December 2022. You can read his original Frisian poems from that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘late autumn’ – is published below.

Photo: Geart Tigchelaar
late autumn

in the autumn I’m able to write
if writing is a form of dying
until the telling turns it into a
feeble infatuation

I prune wild imaginings
cleanse my eyes bloated
from drawn-out days

the ambition burns brightly for a moment, then lets go
sinks into a swoon after a sprinkling of frosty and white

in the autumn I’m able to write
if writing has to be an act
of consolation


© Syds Wiersma
translation: Trevor Scarse

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