Morning Sorrow

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

On the sideboard in the hall
a phone that hasn’t rung for weeks and it shows,
looks like a forlorn child outside the schoolyard
waiting for mum who is late at the hairdresser to come.
Silence so loud I can’t think what to write
I’m overcome by sorrow for the foreign soldiers killed in Iraq
while patrolling a highway,
the bodies have been removed
it’s bad for moral to show the truth,
but the camera pans the spot
were they fell in a war
that benefits not the working class people
from were most soldiers are recruited.
The phone rings
I let it ring five times before answering,
someone asks for Carl!
Carl who?
Sorry wrong number.