Street Cleaner Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Street Cleaner
He is not a lucky man, but he is happy but one day he won on a lottery ticket,
not a not a big sum of money but enough to by wheelbarrow got permission
from the local council to keep the town`s streets clean. Happy, telling himself
he was self- employed and could sleep till nine in the morn if he wanted to.
A busy bee a busy bee he was till he collided with Mercedes was taken to court
and his wheelbarrow was confiscated to pay for the damage. He had a bike and
got a local garage to put a two- wheel contraption to fasten to his bike, the town
got rid of its trash again until an officious policeman asked him if he had a licence
for this he didn`t and it was confiscated. Now he had a jute sack slung on his proud
shoulders and a walking stick with a nail attached, a weapon a police officer said
he was carrying a weapon in public and he was prosecuted. He didn`t show up
to the hearing and when the law came around, he hung from a rafter sometimes
even serious optimists give up and with no cleaner the town sank into misery,
plagued by vermin the population fled, a town given into paper napkins pizza boxes
and burger wrappers and the poor who had nowhere to go. And if this reflects
the life of a typical inner city of our English speaking world it is purely incidental.