Morning In Manila Poem by jan oskar hansen

Tropical morning, it had rained in
the night and streets looked bright,
soon it will be very hot and a throng
of busy people would be milling about
trying to make a dollar and there wasn’t
enough of the stuff to go around.

I had spent the night in an air- condition
hotel room, my normal home was a small
cabin on an old tramp ship that should
have been sold for scrap years ago, but she
was chartered by a Japanese company
for anther two years

The girl who had shared my bed lived in
a shanty town, for her too this was a novelty;
she had wanted me to have breakfast with her,
my god! Did she think was the captain?
I’m the cook, had to be onboard and cater for
a sullen crew, if lucky I would finish work
about seven at night.

A grocer’s, across the road, had opened,
walked over and had a cold beer,
it filled me with hope, thought of having
another one, desisted, drank a pedestrian coke
instead while waiting for a taxi, whishing
the world would stand still, if just for
one lousy a day.