Jan Oskar Hansen Poems

Fleece a dream

The man with thin shoulders and a sack
slung on one of them, used to stop outside my house
...

The broken mind

In the gorge, near the river that died five years
ago and is a pale scar running from inland mountains
...

A Picture 1960

In the sepia light, a thin man, dressed in a generous grey suit,
stands reading titles outside a bookshop, in a London street.
...

Forgotten faces

We only get one summer to remember,
the rest ends up in a blur.
...

Disheartened
The Dutch tourists have left
and last year's cherries
hang unpicked as do almond nuts
...

The Great Escape
When the police arrested a pair
of robbers, a mad cow came scampering,
chaos the robbers legged it.
...

The Spell

Does pure evil exist or is made by the religious
to scare us and fall into the embrace of a god
...

Rubbed out

I stopped at a low stonewall
on my slow progress
...

The huddled masses

They came here
from war and starvation
...

The simple life

It is cold;
sea spray paint the ship white,
...