Broremann’s War
Spring,1945, German troops in his town were walking about not
carrying arms, they spoke to the locals in a friendly manner.
Looking back it was peace before the peace. Near Broremann's home
there was a tall house occupied by old non- commissioned officers,
middle-aged men in their thirties with children, gave the kids
chocolate and sweets (after the war the building was taken over by
Mormons) .
British troops arrived, put a canteen in a disused fish factory,
the German troops had surrendered. Broremann got white bread
with spam from the British. The Germans left by train; many
of the town´s people came to wave goodbye, there was no
dislike against the common soldiers, wrath was directed at the
local Gestapo who had betrayed their country by being crueler
than the enemy and by sporting rimless Himmler glasses.
Years later Broremann met a docker in Hamburg who had spent
five war years in his town. They drank together and declared
it had been a peaceful war.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Dog Power
Dog Power
Abandoned she was and hungry so I took her home. she was scared and hid under
the kitchen sink. I put water and food out and went to bed. She ate it all.
In the morning she came out and made it clear she wanted to go out. Well she did
her business and came back in. When she was two years old she grabbed a packet
of cigarettes from the table and tore it up. So I stopped smoking. People had
implored me to stop, no awhile, she did the trick. I never liked having visitors in
the evening but was too polite to say so. Well. She fixed that to. The only thing she
hated was having a bath. After having one she pretended I didn’t exist until
neighbour told her how nice she looked. She didn’t like female dogs, male dogs
she made short shrift of. She woke me up in the morning and if I sat still too long
writing she took me for walk. She had trained me so well that the day she died
I felt quite helpless and didn’t know what to do the following day.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Anniversary
Birthdays when you are old reminds you of the grave,
you see it a freshly dug hole waiting just for you.
People bring you wine, what else do an old man needs?
Guests getting high on wine they brought you and it is all
jolly. I try to join in. wife has made an effort candlelight
and so on guests are people I never see unless meeting
them at a pretentious art exhibition; and I think of my
childhood when birthdays were important, I tell stories
of a past of poverty and need; wife disrupts saying
I should forget about the past, how can I it shaped me
for what I´m today? Cakes I think of are those I never had
in my infancy; cakes I baked, with condensed milk, when
the captain had his birthday -if he was an ass hole I spat in
the dough-, on ships made into nails somewhere in hot
Bangladesh. How tired I´m lost in the past. Guests leave
the old man´s party, but my wife is not stunned when calm
falls I have to collect the dirty glasses and do the dishes.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Unpainted Painting
Unpainted Painting.
I found a painting on the dump by the road, heads of many colours
seeking shelter, under a colourful umbrella, against coming storm.
It is an original painting signed and dated 2052, who threw it away?
A black fly walks across the computer screen, when I shush it away
it only indolently moves and settles on the edge of the virtual page.
I look for a newspaper to swat it the devious fly reads my thought,
take lift and disappear Into the painting. Now I can read the name:
FEMA. I got, it the date, the work is not yet made by an artist not yet
born; I’m seeing into a future and if the sad faces are anything to go
by, it doesn’t look too promising. Before the darkness swirled into
the village I put the picture back on the dump, as it wasn’t painted
yet and not for me to see. The black fly was buzzing around my head
whispering words in a in a future language I shall never comprehend
In the morning dustmen came and took away the trash.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Odd Love Story
Fall came early that year, the north westerly blew there was sadness
in the air, I just knew something was not right. It was on a day like this
my wife said she wanted a divorce, and she had already worked out
the details of the settlement, I could keep our log cabin. She knew me
so well it was the only thing I wanted. My wife is keen athlete she
likes to run and go skiing, it was only natural that she married the man
who runs a sports shop. My exercise is to get up from my typewriter
walk into to the kitchen to make another cup of coffee.
A rare beautiful winter day, blue sky and pale sun, there was a knock
on my door, I opened saw her green Volvo disappearing down the lane;
by the door a bag of cooked food and jam. And twice a week she does
this, but now I wait till her car has disappeared. “Love and cherish...”
she is a good catholic, takes her promises seriously. In summers, she
runs past my house, looks straight ahead and I pretend not to see her,
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Brazilian Cafe
Grey Hospital and a Brazilian Café.
The hotel where I stayed served lousy coffee, insipid and milky.
I knew there was a Brazilian café nearby, on my way there walked
past the closed down city hospital. Grey walls dripping of uncured
diseases, graffiti and dead windows. Convert it into an office block,
but who wants to work there, a place haunted by cynical doctors and
indifferent nurses who stalk the halls at night waiting for their shift
to end so they can get out from this place of horror, and patients
they have lost interest in and can do nothing for. Tear it down and
throw the debris down a gully. At the Brazilian café the coffee was
strong and healthy; the staff, young, moved as dancers to the music
in the background. There is much of Africa in the Brazilian soul,
passionate, courageous; yet, sometimes, viciously moody.
The girl who served me coffee, smiled with lips and eyes, her skin
dark, glowing… fit. And the sad hospital faded into oblivion.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Extraterrestrials?
The man, in my infancy, who said there were people
on the moon, was laughed at; he was wrong, but not
wrong in thinking there was other life forms on remote
planets. Years ago a big plane got vanished and landed
on the back of the moon where temperature is an even
22 Celsius and there were an abundance of green fruit
that looked like, bananas and nutty tasting blue grass.
Adults missing meat ate each other till there was only
one left, the pilot, and dejected jumped off the moon.
The youthful passengers and children got used to their
surroundings and could cook bananas in fifty variations.
They built caves and decorated them with chairs from
the plane and as beds they used dried banana leaves….
And as time went by the earth became a myth an idea
of paradise lost. This generation of moon dwellers wore
no clothes, what´s point? Only women, on certain dates,
wore dried green skirts. So the man who believed there
was life on the moon may be right after all.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Shorter Days
As Days Get Shorter.
The sunny fall is now dry, hard winter
on the avenue trees stand denuded
while their offspring the leaves, rustles
up and down the street, filling up storm
drains and sighing as they dance with
a lackluster zephyr, not yet ready to
merge into dark soil; tawny and auburn,
I look at my hands, not there yet.
Few birds in trees they have gone to
Africa, which is not far from where
I live…for a bird, they spend nights in
the avenue’s trees, safer there than on
the country side; seen as vermin when
there are too many, too few and bird
lovers and other weird people, worry
if birds of prey will survive.
[...] Read more
poem by Oskar Hansen
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As Days Get Shorter
As Days Get Shorter.
The sunny fall is now dry, hard winter
on the avenue trees stand denuded
while their offspring the leaves, rustles
up and down the street, filling up storm
drains and sighing as they dance with
a lackluster zephyr, not yet ready to
merge into dark soil; tawny and auburn,
I look at my hands, not there yet.
Few birds in trees they have gone to
Africa, which is not far from where
I live…for a bird, they spend nights in
the avenue’s trees, safer there than on
the country side; seen as vermin when
there are too many, too few and bird
lovers and other weird people, worry
if birds of prey will survive.
[...] Read more
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Away From The Camera
Away From the Camera.
In the Bay of Bengal, near Tripura, a tank ship ran
aground, an old ship that had been economical for
its owner, carrying crude for a hungry west and
crewed by low paid seamen. And she was sold to
the people who would tear ships apart, like French
avant-garde butchers with hearts of frozen rocks.
Squall in the bay, the ship broke anchor and, like
a horse that seeks grassland, she sought high seas.
Alas she had oil onboard must be caught before spill
washed on sandy shore. Cowboy tugboats rode out
lassoed the old lady back to the place of destruction.
It is in the Bay of Bengal the infidel drowned Bin Laden,
in moonlight his coffin is a silvery specter in the bay.
It drifted to shores of New Jersey, on the voyage made
a devil´s pact with sandy storm; revenge for those who
dare laugh in the face of Islam. For her crew this meant
little, but pale memories of peace when dolphins played
on cobalt sea, and grown men had hearts of poetry.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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