For our wedding on May 21, 1966, my mother wrote a touching poem, which she also spoke on tape. She was unable to attend the wedding. So Biene and I could at least listen to and enjoy her voice. Chronologically, her message belongs to Book III of the Klopp family chronicle, but her good wishes and heart-felt words are a very fitting conclusion to the trials and tribulations we had to endure before we could finally tie the knot.
The mushroom season is over now. The local buyers have closed their shops. It has been a good year. The Pine mushrooms have been bountiful in spite of the extremely dry conditions in the summer and early fall. In the basket you see a very fine collection of No. 1 rated mushrooms (buttons) that were selling this year for about $20 a pound. It always brings excitement and joy to us after Gertrud (Biene) has been combing the local forests for these precious fungi. To highlight the season I wrote this poem a few years ago. Enjoy.
A couple of years ago I wrote a poem inspired by the splendour of fall just within our own yard, which represents a microcosmos of the wonderful world of the Arrow Lakes. I embedded the poem two lines at a time into the video that captured the autumnal mood. Enjoy.
Oh let once again those hours
of togetherness arise before you,
to see the still unbroken flower
of quiet bliss a second time.
Do you remember how I with inexperienced hand
wrote golden lines in our book of dreams,
the gentle veil, which promised to span a lifetime
in tender sweetness, where it remained?
Sweet and heavy bliss, once vanished,
penetrated our hearts with Dionysian force;
for we, as links in the chain of ancestor and descendent,
rebellious and hopeful found our strength and support.
With somber glance, I see the last rays of the day
in icy heights unfold before me.
Even though a distant heart still beats for me,
I sense fear and worry reign within me.
While seeking to catch the aura of the past,
I look questioningly up to the evening sky.
Dearest Biene, come and hurry to my hut
and open the book of our dreams again!
Picking up the pieces of a shattered dream is better than having no pieces to pick up at all.
Matshona Dhliwayo
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 