Shore Leave

First came Dublin, porter and rain, longshoremen and short-arsed chancers. Everyone drunk and not giving a damn—feckless, they called it—a breath away from losing grip. The Gulf Stream thick with ballads and profanity. Then came Antwerp, fierce proud Flemish eyes, botched tattoos lauding big ships and mother. Everyone drunk and not giving a damn. A stevedore told us that all ports were so, that that was why men went to sea, to put in at port and not give a damn. We drank to that and much more else, woke rank and wanting more—ate onions, spuds, horsemeat with brown mustard, ale after ale after ale. Up the coast around the Hook, Rotterdam. The same strain in every eye—drunk, not giving a Dutch damn. Herring, they said, steels the gut for beer soak. We ate their herring and drank their brew, sang shanty after shanty. Home boys home. A breath away from losing grip. Thick tongued and ropey, two days to reach Cuxhafen. We toasted Kaiser Bill and Lorelei, dead German poets we’d never read. (The locals said we talked in clichés, but offered no alternatives.) The night stretched, the outcome as before, in Dublin and Antwerp and Rotterdam. The Cuxhafeners told us they’d visit, if ever we found home. They told us to avoid Norwegian whalers. They told us—warned and convinced us—not to go to Hamburg, for the beer was sour and the women there had no teeth. They told us to continue north to Greenland, to the ports of Sisimiut and Paamiut, that we would be welcomed there. They told us they’d remember us, that they’d sing our names in song.