Athenian Night Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

August in Athens is always confusing
I spent the evening looking at a white wall the moon had lit up,
waiting for the movie to start.
Staggered into a church where bearded priests handed out bags
of yesterday's cake.
The elderly lady behind me got none, it was her second time
she had been in the line
I gave her my bag and felt good about my act of charity.
In the deep shadows of the park, I found a grotto displaying
Jesus in he looked like a sleeping angel, one painted by Caravaggio.
The painted Jesus opened his eyes smiled like an urchin selling himself to a paederast.
Behind two nuns giggled and I fled this religious horror.
Came to a lone bar run by a horse that had fled a Russian circus.
As Alice Walker said, " horses make the landscape more beautiful."
I drank ouzo, she had hay.
At midnight we rode through the summer night.