Old News Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Old News

As the clock struck seven, a summer evening, outside
the town hall, a horse pulling a cart bolted. The driver
fell off and broke a leg, a policeman on duty was able
to stop the horse and calm it down. In our small inland
town this was a big event and many people took their
evening walk down to the town hall and stood in groups
listening to what the witnesses, two elderly men who
spent their time there sometimes doing odd jobs but
mostly hung around doing nothing; now for once they
had an audience and were treated as equals. News get
old and little is as stale as yesterdays´ the driver’s leg
mended, the horse was made into glue and tasty salami,
no one was interested in what a pair of layabouts had
to say, not now that a circus was coming to town.