A Day Of Reckoning Poem by jan oskar hansen

A Day of Reckoning


Forenoon, it had been raining during the night
the wizened winter landscape was now green
and amongst olive trees long legged sheep grazed;
their pastor and, on occasions, executioner, sat on
a boulder casting dreams into the future; man and
beast, rustic peace, pity I hadn’t a camera.

On my way to the village to buy the papers, a sheep
had been run over by a truck, with its stomach burst
open and its content glinting in the sun, it was still
alive. Ah, you dumb animal abandoned by everyone
and it looked at me without any hope of deliverance,
so I reversed my car and ran over its head.

As the skull was crushed its eyes popped out, landed
on the middle of the road that now had eyes to see
with, the shook of this made it shudder long rents in
the asphalt wench black tears trickled. Quickly
I threw the eyes into the thicket which was instantly
transformed into a field of tinkling blue bells.

From nowhere a road gang of small, denim clad men
with big hats appeared, they where badly paid lived
on road kills. Expertly strew soft sand on blood, filled
cracks with healing asphalt, and off they drove with
their dinner. Empty road it had no knowledge of what
had just occurred, it was up to me to remember.