Jan Kooistra was the RIXT poet of the month May 2020. You can read his original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘the lay of the land’ – is published below.
the lay of the land that a girl sits in front of a shot window softly crying in a room that used to be a home that a woman looks at that girl through the holes in the wall and feels her child’s hunger pains that is the lay of the land that a primal forest is transformed into a wasteland in a day or ten and fishes drown in plastics and pesticides that a petty thief is thrown into jail while a big-time crook lives in pomp and circumstance and lays down the law that is the lay of the land that a virus prowls the streets like a hungry wolf, laps up millions and leaves us sheepishly paralysed that air and sky become fresh and bright again animals dare to roam grounds long seceded leaving us dumbstruck and unenlightened that is the lay of the land that we’ll be flying again to luxurious places for a few crappy cents across dying oceans and crowded slums that a wistful writer stares out of his window at the faraway hills turns around, forges that one sentence that is the lay of the land © Jan Kooistra Translation: Trevor M. Scarse