A Landscape Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

A Landscape

Here in this landscape of bushes and crippled
trees, silence speaks of the final peace.
Grotesque dead trees, daylight ghosts, stand there
with grey boughs stretching upward appealing
to a fairytale god, “give us today a new life” but
no, there is only one god he is almighty, and hears
not your fearful whispered wishes, those who do
not understand are doomed to a life of an empty
pursuit for pleasures, crowding nightclubs and
casinos trying to avoid being alone with the night
and facing the truth: we are mortal and heaven is
to be remembered for a while by other mortals.
Faces in a black frame seeing you seeing through
you and into a void. Yet I fear not this landscape as
it is shunned by man and no harm can happen to me
here except the inevitable