Friday in Paradise

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

It has been raining,
not a drumbeat a warrior like deluge
but fine drizzle
that made the neighbour’s roof tiles shine with a silvery gleam.
If the sun comes back
they will turn golden in late afternoon.

Yet my thoughts are mundane,
how do I dust the green plant?
Once tried to vacuum clean it,
till the apparatus sprouted leaves
and I had to stick it in the garden’s soil,
now it is a tree bearing lumps of under-the-bed fluff.

The old man,
who collects dreams in a sack slung on his narrow back,
walks past my window, stops and quizzically looks in,
I shake my head
got nothing for him today;
he doesn’t mind the sack is full and he’s very tired.