What The Priest Said Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

What a Priest told me.
I was young, fourteen, late at night, I was hasting home, jumped over fences,
crossed a garden when I saw a naked woman by the fireside, wood fire casted
a warm glow on her body, washing herself with a cloth she dipped into a sink
bucket placed on a chair in front of her. She slowly cleaned her arms, neck,
breasts, legs feet and finally she washed the part where legs meet the body.
All in slow caring motion. She put a kimono on sat down and opened a book,
after a few minutes she put the book down looked out of the window, I was
petrified and hoped I looked like a bush, she smiled, to me or herself, I shall
never know. At this point I hastily left, woozy, confused and in love. Later
I saw her at the grocer’ she had bought flowers, looked up and smiled at me.
Of course I didn’t know, at the time, that she was one of Ruben’s women put
there to tempt me into a life of infidelity forever seeking perfect, chaste love
and not involved in the physical side that smells of under- arms transpiration.
If I see one of Ruben’s women, and she smiles at me I now her love is a dream
and with aching heart and regret I walk away.