Will a Passionate Poem make a Difference?
Picking up the pieces of a shattered dream is better than having no pieces to pick up at all.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Poetry to the Rescue!
For three long months Biene had to endure the assaults from her parents, twin brother, relatives and friends on our plans to carve out a niche for our future in Canada. No doubt, while the arguments were partly driven by selfishness and the fear of losing daughter, sister and friend, they were also motivated by love and concern for her happiness in a distant land. Biene, endowed by nature with a big heart and a keen sense of perception felt empathy especially for her mother’s despair. Thus, she made compromises, which deeply affected me and touched a very sensitive nerve.
While Biene was struggling with real people, who were bent on imposing their idea of happiness on her, I in faraway Canada had to fight a different battle. Having no one to talk to and argue with, I battled with phantoms breaking through the crevices of my beleaguered mind, where dream and reality once so intimately interwoven were drifting apart with each new letter from Germany.
Then I remembered that two years earlier I had written a novella entitled “Carthage” (yet to be translated into English). The book written for Biene was my desperate attempt to declare my love to her and to win back her heart after the engagement with her Dutch fiancé had fallen apart. So as a prelude to a very long letter I composed a poem. It was written in the spirit of German classic literature and poetry that I was studying at the time and was definitely inspired by my worries about all the troublesome changes made to our plans. The poem was to remind Biene of our hopes and aspirations, which we had recorded less than a year earlier in our book of dreams.
In Part II of this chapter I will publish the original poem in German and for my English speaking blogging friends I will add a translation with no attempt to preserve rhyme or rhythm. My hope is that not too much of its emotional impact is lost in translation.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 
I look forward to reading it—I wish my German was better, and I will give it a try. Otherwise, I will default to English.
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The translation is OK. Just don’t try Google translate on my German poem. What comes out is truly bizarre!
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Oh, I’ve learned how terrible Google Translate is on German!
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Here is an example, Amy, how atrocious the translation by Google can be. Teure Biene (dear Biene) was translated into “expensive Bee”. What a joke!
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LOL! That is a great example. For me it’s also how sentence structure gets so mangled. Google cannot handle all those verbs at the end of a sentence.
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OH Peter my Heart goes out to both of you, you are keeping me on pins and needles waiting for
the next chapter.
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For a while Facebook did not announce the latest posts on my blog. So you may have missed earlier publications. Thank you, Inge, for your kind words of appreciation!
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Looking forward to Part II, Peter. It is amazing how you endured and still kept looking forward to Biene coming to Canada and your future together, despite the many obstacles.
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As the story makes it so clear, there were great problems on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Looking back it was actually a great miracle that we managed to get together in Canada and got married in spite of all the opposition. Thank you for your kind words of appreciation!
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Yes, it is a miracle the tw of you got married. God had plans for the two of you together. Blessings! You are most welcome!
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Can’t wait for the poem, Peter. And thanks for your kindness to translate it to English 😄
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Oh, you are so welcome, Nurul! I hope you will enjoy it!
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Peter, jetzt kann ich aber nicht mehr lange warten auf was dann passierte. Ugh I am finding myself writing in German all of a sudden, it must be “Die Spannung” auf Fortsetzung. As always your post to read is the highlight of my Friday. Thank you.
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Du kannst ruhig deine Kommentare auf Deutsch schreiben, Cornelia. Wir sind ja beide mehrsprachig. Thank you for your interest in our story! Looking back it seems like a great miracle that under all these opposing forces we got together in Canada and got married in the land of our dreams.
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Having no one to talk to and argue with…this is hard to understand! Why was ist like this? Didn’t you have friends there to talk to?
That’s what we can learn from women – usually they have friends to talk to.
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Yes, women generally do not only have friends to talk to, but in general find it easier to talk about the most personal problems. Thus, they have the means to unburden themselves. As I mentioned to Brigit, the problem lay within my own self-consciousness.
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How about your brothers and your sister, Peter, could you not talk to them? But they are family, they are not neutral in matters like this, so maybe not such a feasible idea …
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Good question, Brigit! I was too shy to bring these personal questions with my brothers ans sister. In that sense you must understand what I said: ‘I had no one to talk to and to argue with’.
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Wenn es wirklich niemanden gibt, dem man sich in der Not anvertrauen kann oder möchte, ist es sehr hilfreich, seine Gedanken in Versen oder Ähnlichem auszudrücken..und manchmal kommt etwas sehr Schönes dabei heraus!
Noch nach Jahren wird man beim Lesen solcher Zeilen daran erinnert, wie man sich “damals” gefühlt und was einen besonders bewegt hat.
Herzliche Grüße aus Sottmar!👋
Edda
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Schon früh hatte ich gelernt, meine Gefühle in Versen zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Die poetische Ader ist bei vielen der Kegler Familie zu finden. Meine Mutter schrieb oft ihre Erlebenisse in Gedichten. So hat sie es auch mit ihren Kindheitserinnerungen gemacht. Bei Geburtstagsfeiern wurden sogar Miniopern geschrieben. Ja, du hast recht, das Gedicht an Biene adressiert war mich eine Art Befreiung meiner ängstlichen Gefühle um unsere Zukunft. Viele liebe Grüße auch von uns im fernen Kanada!
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I look forward to reading it!
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what a nice and romantic idea to write a poem, dear Peter. I’m looking forward to reading it next week. Hope you have a nice day, kind regards Mitza
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I look forward to reading though poem, although in my case I’m afraid it will have to be the English version since I don’t speak German. I did once have a German friend try to teach me to say “I’m hungry,” but apparently it sounded more like I was saying “I have a chicken.” Oh well…
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Ich bin hungrig. I don’t know where the chicken comes from. Perhaps the first three letters of hungrig. I see you have to put up with the translation of my youthful poem. Haha!
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