The Assessment Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Assessment


My copy pen fell to the floor I bent down to pick it up
now I feel dizzy. I came to this country, decades ago
to write, many pens have fallen on the floor- although
I do not write with a pen but use a word processor.
A pen is a crutch and to make droll shapes on sheets
of paper; a thousands sheets filled with doodles while
waiting to write something sensible on the processor;
a mad publisher has shown interest in them.
Twenty years feels a very long time, twenty more and
I’ll be ninety bet I will not be able to pick up a pen from
the floor then. Now I wake up in the night and a steady
hum tells me I have wasted my time scrawling, a book
of scribble how is that for an epitaph?