Class Divide Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

It was an odd situation the town was divided by a river.
The west side was the posh part. I lived there, that is
I worked as a cook at a tourist hotel and had a room in
the basement of the hotel. The east, across the river,
was where my girlfriend lived, a working class area
that only had gritted roads and houses were not painted.
The hotel director’s daughter loved me even though,
she had gone to a boarding school in Swiss, all I had
to do was to take elocution lessons and the world of
paved roads and villas would be mine. But my heart was
in uproar I loved the girl across the river she spoke my
language, salty and direct. So I crossed the Rubicon
an August night when the moon was full, but I had
dallied too long, she didn’t want a boyfriend who spoke posh.