Alfred Out Fishing Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Alfred out fishing

Alfred the pianist, who insists he is not my father,
And I went out fishing, we caught a few and when I gutted one of them
We discovered a ring which Alfred said he had given to my mother Olga in Ankara
before the war. It was an expensive ring -
Gold was cheap back then- and it fitted his middle finger.
We didn`t feel like eating fish after that, and I gave them to an elderly seal
resting on a sandbank, it lived on what other seals gave it.
When my father Alfred was very old he gave me a ring I to give Olga
my mother who refused to believe I was her son, she had never
seen the ring before and refused to take it, so I gave it back to the sea
and the forgotten tragedy of someone drowning alone; mind it is
rare that someone holds the hand of the ones who drown.