The Collaborator Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

He and his wife ran a high class grocery shop
and I was often outside looking in absorbing
rarefied air of middle class living, that was till
his wife saw me and shushed me away.
War came, the window display got a bit thinner
by now there was also a sprinkling of officer of
the occupying army. A grocer hear things and it
can, if whispered in the right ear, be advantageous.

The war ended and the grocer had money to paint
his shop in bright colours, which was nice in a war
weary, drab little town. Time is an enemy his wife
died he displayed her picture amongst Portuguese
sardines. And we all came to look. A supermarket
opened and we lost interest in a little grocer shop.