Love Poem: Through the Keyhole of Time
Jan Oskar Hansen Avatar
Written by: Jan Oskar Hansen

Through the Keyhole of Time

Through The Keyhole of Time

The houses were made of old timber, like a Russian village 
on the endless steppe - maybe I had Dr Zhivago on my mind. 
But where was Lara? I was in Russia once thought it sinister, 
roads without light and black limousines gliding slowly by.  
Lived in a house that had rough planks for floors and no 
indoor loo, luckily it was summer that year. 
At a café, the woman who ran it looked as a woman I loved, 
and never lost my longing for. I visited the place, there were 
accordion music and much gayety, but the woman I loved 
looked at me with dislike when prancing around with her two 
lovers who were junior officers in the red army and went to 
the gym every day lifting dumbbells; impotent rage, thought 
of assassinating them. She, the woman I loved, had not aged 
I was now forty years older than her.  
 When the music stopped she dismissed her lovers I asked her 
why she had left, she said it was because I was boring and had 
no sense of fun. When the music began, to prove her wrong, 
I danced to show her how much fun I was capable of, but I fell 
on the floor and for once people laughed.  
Knew I had failed her and could not understand what more 
I could do to make her love me. But I had been blind, outside 
a woman smiled, a warm African smile, it took me forty years 
before I met her again and mourn the lost years without her.