Hein Jaap Hilarides was RIXT-poet of the month January 2019. You can read his poems of that month, written in the Bildts language, here. One of them – I sing against the relevance– is published here in translation.
I sing against the relevance
I sing against the relevance,
not the existence of last year.
No, I sing for the idea that
you should always grill someone
to stick to his imagination, fabricator
of a world of words that we inhabit.
Imagination makes a world of words liveable,
meaning to a condemned house.
I look at the poet.
The poet smells me, knows where I stand.
Will he find me? Good?
I smell his weak, sweet garlic smell.
I lose my smell,
my pages come loose.
The poet sees me. Doesn’t he?
He approaches me, feels me and whispers:
The preserving jar says the water isn’t okay.
The water blames the glass’s transparency.
© Hein Jaap Hilarides Translation: Tevor M. Scarse