September Rain Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

September Rain (sonnet)


Most days, on my way to the bar or grocery shop,
I walk past an old man who sits in the shade of
an oak, on a creaky sofa that has lost its place in
the lounge. I usually stop and talk to him, he can’t
remember me from one day to the next, tells me
the same story about his parents, and where he
grew up; Portugal of yore. He isn’t here today, only
the mantle, he wraps around himself when there
is a chill in the air, is flung on the old sofa; a zephyr
whispers that he will not be back. “Will I be that old?
I ask the waning sun. I sit on a sofa on the terrace,
a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, scan the sky,
in the vale where I live and my parents too lived,
we wait for September rain.