Nyborg Ferryport, Saturday

The earth's fiery core stuck a tongue
up the glass pot of the coffee maker
a new day threatened, and it was going to be
a delightful day in Denmark:

You put on your most beautiful mask
ivory eyes, a nose of gold and the scarab
that lay like a drop of silver in the pocket
the hearses were trimmed with flags
and down by the cathedral there were still college girls
wandering about in black wedding gowns.

You could see the whole thing from the bus
sitting silently with a gyroscope in your navel
on the way to the station
gymnastics were being performed
on the lawn in front of the high school
the Big Dipper was now standing still on the iris
there a first gleam of sunshine, a beech tree
and you wouldn't be surprised
if your father-in-law were walking around again
out in the field in the light of dawn looking
for bronze-age graves.

That was Friday, today is Saturday
and it can happen to the best of us
on the table with the breakfast rolls lies suddenly
a summons from the hospital for a cancer scanning
you wake up one morning in the staircase
with puke on your vest, only a single butt
left in the pack.

There's the career, and there's the leisure time
where you warm up for the future
but who now and then wouldn't like
to burn the set of documents
that hold you in place in society
go out on the roads to die somewhere
one summer day on a grass field
still not sober on anything?

I was born on Zealand
in a family of cottagers, day-laborers and artisans
for them the sea was only something
off to the west at the beach
but I must have dozed a little, missed seeing the Great Belt
so now it's Nyborg Ferryport, the train is stopping
and I hear the passengers talking:

One of them flushes Dannebrog down the toilet
declares his independence, standing
at the sink in an international pose
but gets caught by his suspenders in the history, the language
and has to run in place, an autonomous Sisyphus
as a marathon runner in a future
that never really gets started.

The other has parked his house trailer
behind Dannevirke during the siege of Copenhagen
August 29, 1943, and never knows doubt
wants our only frontier down at the Eider
sprinkles Cyklon B on the aliens' cornflakes
and cherishes the vocabulary like a psychotic mother
cherishes her autistic child.

Statistically the Dane is a suicide
who after a divorce in accordance with the settlement
sits on the ice cap's disfigured moraines
with Ekstra Bladet, a cold Tuborg
and laughs his ass to hamburger.

Here you have to stand in the pillory for half an hour
in the lobby of any public agency
before you're allowed to be tied hand and foot
five million powerless in a blind alley
we call it democracy
we are the world's best
at talking past each other.

These provincial towns are all alike
flowerboxes and advertising signs in the pedestrian mall
the shops soon to close and the few cars
driving trough depopulated streets
now the map of Denmark is pulled down over the blackboard
a mobile is hanging in the window above the cold radiator
in all the schools of the country.

Maybe, in Copenhagen
a roar of rapture ascends from the Stadium
while art critics stand nodding at a gallery
where a still life's memento mori
now consists of a happening where the artist
fucks three dead pigs in turn
but other than that it's the country's closing time now
families settle down in front of the TV
and the youth go to the discotheque in order to score
a little self-assurance and consolation.

It's Nyborg Ferryport, it's Saturday
and I am at the same time
on my way away and home, and could perhaps
like Ekelöf, say that I am a stranger in this land
but this land is no stranger in me
if it weren't for the sky that here always
looks like the light from a sea
which I have never known
and all the same would not be able
to do without.

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