As A Day Passes Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

As The Days Passes
The cemetery on the hill, facing the blue bay, looks inviting in spring sun.
A burial procession is coming up the road, the last one before lunch,
the priest has folded his hands and think of food. As soon as the coffin is
lowered, three the gravediggers go to work.
Kisses, hugs, tears and sober handshakes, the group of mourners break
up, the bereaved needs to eat too. We are because my wife’s mother is
in a hole in the wall with glass door, she came to change the cloth that
covers the coffin, but has forgotten the key.
I think of my mother, she has been dead a long time, memories of her
last years are bleached bones in the human wasteland I have a picture
of her when she was young and can now see, she a woman too, I cherish
my memories of that time. She had a difficult life, enough said.
Why do people drink? I drink to ease the yoke of my own mortality and
the whispering voice that mocks me. After a bottle of wine the evening
floats by, like a pink cloud on the sky, the scornful voice tires itself out
and falls silent, and softly now life is beautiful and full of dreams.