Salary Man Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

I had been to a place I should not be, alone
in a street with neon light and it was dawn.
I saw a human river coming out of the subway
running down some steps, filling the street
with silence and the drumbeat of despair.

Neon light shivered as the harsh day took over
thousands of men in suits, and some women too,
dressed as fitting for work, when filling offices
with gravity and restraint as befitting for salary
people who came from the mysterious suburbia.

Evening, the river was as a film run backwards,
down into the subway the river disappeared in
a silence that lacked any expression of delight,
the monotony of work had made them into shy
human robots that had succumbed to labour.