Merry Christmas

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

On this holly night I miss the children
I never had.
Between me and the silencer
nothing to remember.
Never shall a son fondly say:
‘As my dad always said!’
Childless men walk in parks
looking as children’s play,
a cape of loneliness they wear
across shoulders that never carried
a happy child
as their own fathers once carried them.
Childless man, be damned!