The Field Of Mortality Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Field of Mortality

On a field, not far from here, I see millions of lit candles in long rows,
but only at night; in daylight it is a potato patch. A man, you may call
him god if you like, walks among the candles every so often he stops
and with his thumb and index finger snuffs out light; the skin on his
fingers are corned from this arduous work. Behind him new candles
spring up, sometimes he turns and go back waste some of them too.
He is heading for the part where the candles have been burned out,
only the wick flickers. He uses he thumb to bump them off; a spiral of
grey smoke in still air. He is old as time, sometimes he misses candles
that keep on burning, although they have no wick. As dawn begins,
behind the easterly mountain, the field of mortality turns into a potato
patch again, where an old man is harvesting spuds.