The Secret Poem by jan oskar hansen

Walked passed the field, where eight sheep
grazed, on my way to woods- I was awed by
this timeless scene, this rustic idyll;

the sheep looked at me with total disinterest,
and that was ok, I wasn’t talking to them;
not without mint sauce.

In the tarn, deep in the woods, I swam with
an inland mermaid, later we sat on a rock,
she, she was bronzed and looked famous.

On my way, back from the tryst, the sheep
were gone, only a pair of mules; blood
glinted on verdant grass and drooling lips

The mules looked at me as to say: “Well,
so we are all depraved, we eat raw sheep
and you sleep with a fish.”