Emancipation Garden

I puzzle at the bust of King Christian IX
with its Danish inscriptions, a language whose
ghosts haunt our streets: Kongens Gade,
Wimmelskaftet, Fort Pladsen.

But if this is Emancipation Garden, where
is Von Scholten? What plaque bears his words
we all learned in school:
"All unfree in the Danish West Indies are, from today, free."

No flourishing rhetoric, no long-winded speeches,
no qualifications:
"All unfree in the Danish West Indies are, from today, free."
And where is Buddhoe Gottlieb who guided the slaves

in their petition for their emancipation, whose
name means "god's love"? And the Moravians, who taught
the slave children to read because at least the Danes
lacked the hypocrisy to ban such a thing?

Instead we get Christian IX, who became king
after all this, if my rusty Danish is right, whose son
accidentally burned down the building across the street
when a Christmas party got too raucous.

They've never rebuilt the third floor. No one knows why.