Introduction

Listen to the story told by the reed

Of being separated:

Since I was cut from the reed-bed

I have made this crying sound.

Anyone separated from someone he loves

understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source

longs to go back….

-Rumi. Tr. Coleman Barks

I was born in Hamburg, Germany at the end of the Second World War. Later I was told that it had been at the time of the worst bombings over the city, when everything fell apart and people were brought to their knees.

I had entered a world in chaos, even though my family lived in a green and wealthy neighbourhood which remained unharmed. Only a few miles away families had lost their homes, their relatives and their belongings while children played in ruins. I and my family lacked nothing. No one was taken by the war, yet all through my childhood and even in later years I felt that the post war ashes, loss, lack, un-forgiveness, shame and guilt were hanging invisibly over everyone and everything. This black cloud enveloped the post war world, despite the efforts to forget and rebuild the country in a hurry.

The world in which I grew up felt angry, fearful and void of joy. I grew up amongst people who were mistrusting of one another. I began to reject my own country and consequently felt I did not belong. Early on I developed a longing for a better and a more joyful world in which everything would be fully alive. I was certain that happiness and joy and a language shared between all people existed, a place of no separation and complete oneness.

I made myself an exile early on. As soon as I was able to leave Germany I began to travel and live abroad, desperately searching and never finding myself nor the imagined joyful country, the belonging and home I longed for, thus leading an unstable existence. A sense of abandonment always accompanied me, as well as a sense of homelessness. I travelled and worked abroad extensively and the more I did this, the more homeless and exiled I felt…….

60 years after the 2nd World War had ended I realised how deeply the post war era had contributed to my feelings of alienation and exile and the rejection of my native country. I made a deliberate effort to find peace by visiting the old country regularly. In the process of writing, the pieces I have compiled here have almost to my own surprise, emerged as’ the voice of an exile’, a thread which has run through my entire life, a dualistic state of mind in between worlds, never being fully here or there.

To quote Bob Dylan

……. We sit here stranded

though we are all doing our best to deny it…. (from Visions of Johanna)

Most of the poems I have written directly in English, which is not my native tongue, some others have emerged in German. This was not the result of a conscious decision but rather what came naturally to me. This use at times of one language and then the other I feel is also an expression of my inner exile and fragmentation and split mind.

A memory

I carry a memory of a time before time,

guiding me on my way,

hidden between the folds of my mind,

engrained in my soul,

a place I once belonged to,

tore myself away from,

where all was one,

bathed in beauty and light,

a place I still long for,

different from all I can see,

a knowing of home deeply buried inside

you and me.

2004

I’ve tried to run

from suburb to city,

to mountains and sea,

from father and mother

to husband,

son and daughter.

I hold memories of

passing moments like clouds,

dissolving,

shrinking,

fading,

losing their colour,

like used garments,

all turning to sand running through my fingers.

I hold nothing,

my hands are empty.

I am left with just myself.

There is no outer place to run to,

all roads return to me.

2003

Lakishma* 2

I have grown old and tired.

My hair turned white over years of longing and reaching for Lakishma.

I have looked for Lakishma around every corner and

beneath every stone.

For moments I have even tasted Lakishma,

when a stranger and I smiled at each other,

the moments you and I talked and sang together,

when I could truly hear and listen to another,

the evenings when we lit wild fires and our gaze followed the flying sparks disappearing in the night sky,

or the moments when I lay in the purple heather and saw clouds passing by and there was not a thought on my mind,

those days when I was present enough to witness the short moment when Lakishma seemed sprinkled over the land only to be gone the next.

Oh, father,

Oh, mother,

Oh, sister,

Oh, brother,

Oh, friend,

all of you, who, like me, are still hoping for Lakishma to stay,

to sweeten the harsh taste of our lives,

Oh daughter,

Oh, son,

Oh, husband

Oh, stranger

walking down the windy road,

the mere tasting of Lakishma will never be good enough.

It will pass,

therefore, if you are as thirsty as I still am,

to be filled with Lakishma

give me your hand.

Let me tell you what I’ve come of late to understand:

Lakishma always is, but

we must first learn and allow to

stand in

despair and discontent,

the pool of tears beneath our feet,

Hand over our fearful

dreaming

running

doing

and

seeking

for Lakishma outside ourselves.

Find it

-Inside-

Only a breath away,

in the silent space

which has no name,

no face

nor form.

2015

*The word ‘Lakishma’ is my own and I use it to describe the elusive state of home/happiness