Fresh-Landed, Copenhagen
by Robert Alan Jamieson
A small boy passes by, carrying
a sizeable codfish, held by the gills.
Its tail, about touching the ground, trails
drops of bloody water – where’s he headed?
In answer, the vision suddenly diverts
into an unmarked doorway –
next to … quite a high-end restaurant.
Reminder – this is not a river, but the sea,
not a tidal estuary, but deeps –
and though this wooden dock is on a little island,
the city’s imperial centrum’s near at hand.
Two older boys, I see, are doing the fishing –
baited lines. Silent patience.
One, Greenlandic by his features,
seems the expert - he it is who knows this prey.
A blond boy watches, slightly awed,
as a sudden jolt up-draws another cod –
this one very much alive.
I ask, in hopeful English, to take a photo. The blond
steps up the dock towards me, grinning,
a handsome healthy Danish lad, while the other
turns away to make the kill, to sort the tackle –
till I insist he show his catch. I wait as, smiling, he does.
Through the lens, against the backdrop of a veteran schooner,
the codfish sleek and green, but gaping dead, between them,
pride irradiates – such innocent young killers!
I think: I know your kind from childhood very well.
Click.
Later, in ‘Nordatlantens Brygge’, a former warehouse,
where trade from the Danish North had centred once,
a wall map shows the route from København
north west to Tórshavn – Faroe – from there, to Reykjavik
and on round Greenland’s southern cape, to Nuuk.
Colonial satellites in former times.
The names have changed, but on this map
they’re still chain-linked by a thick red line –
a sea-route looping coasts to find safe haven,
as any ship must obviously do – except,
that thick red line of ink goes straight
through the very heart of Shetland,
as if it flew – obscuring the isles beneath it.
How odd it feels – to be
so close-related yet passed over,
in this red Danish, northern chain –
to so connect, yet find yourself irrelevant –
a mere tourist, with an eye for passing fish –
in such a strangely ‘hjemlig havn’.