Shining Light Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Shining Light


Sometimes light in Algarve is too sharp I can see
the lot at once, the future, past and the landscape.
All is white, have I been where I’m going, or I’m
coming back from where I have not been?

I sit in the shade under a carob tree and watch ants
going down a hole with bits of twigs preparing
for a nuclear holocaust, and the catastrophe that
befalls all groups of people sooner or later.

Light is no longer white but amber and a magazine
editor says I’m Danish, yet published my poem; it
doesn’t matter that I have lost my old identity, he
could have called me a Palestinian for all I care.