The Poetry Of..
Jan Oskar Hansen...........................
Poor Little Ones
Since a child of four nearly drowned in the town's little lake
in the park, it has been filled in and painted green, now it's
the only place in town where children are allowed to bicycle
providing they wear helmets and knee pads, if not their bikes
are confiscated and irresponsible parents fined. Ornamental
ponds in private gardens too have been cemented over, but
there is a choice of paint, red, green, sea-blue or nursery pink.
It is also against the law to climb trees, as children may fall
and break a leg, a tree found to be climbed on will be cut to
winter wood by men wearing yellow vests, ditto helmets and
in charge of a chainsaw. However, there is also an indoor gym
where children can climb up rubber trees and if they fall they
land on the softest foam; they fall all the time, a proof that they
should never been allowed near a real forest.
Never Getting There.
The village had been spared layers of tarmac
that ceaselessly rolls over land, it's dusty in
summer and muddy in winter, but the square
is cobble-stoned; it's from there I used to take
the bus going south, where I have cottage in
a vale, near a lake, and a dog waiting for me.
At dawn, the bus was almost there I could see
the cottage and hear the dog's glad bark, but
the bus always turned into a carriageway and
drove back to the village which, this last time,
had drowned in layers of warm asphalt, that
somehow, reminded me of a Nordic spring.
The Philosophy of Loss.
A thief came to our home, said he was
a shop-fitter, stole mother's heart and
the savings she had in a jar; peed into
the kitchen-sink and left by the backdoor
She cried, not too long and unseemly,
a charming man had entered her dreary
poverty struck life; the money was
only worth two packets of cigarettes
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