Washing Machine 1 Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Washing Machine
There was a time I always went home, by road rail, flight or by bus
I always got there and still do. Even though when I get there I want
to leave. The house shrinks every year sibling's gone mother too,
she never looked up from the romantic novel she was reading to say
halloo.1953, it was summer, well there are summers every year,
some are warm, some not. I was home from the sea and had bought
mother a washing machine and we were the only ones in the street that
had one it was a warm summer, open windows, cold beer and laughter.
Then for a reason I could not fathom a silence fell, the sky was grey and
nothing was the same again; it was only me who kept returning home.
The washing machine I bought in 1953 is still in the basement rusty and
dusty, but it had for a short time brought happiness and an end to
stifling poverty after the war ended, when factories stood still and it
was hard to be working class.