A Night with Yoric II A Poem 2010 by Klaus J. Gerken II_1 INTERSECTIONS 1. cuxhaven jan cux stadt am tor zur welt "Rumms! Das gilt der Obrigkeit - "Rumms! Das gilt dem Stetsbereit - "Rumms! Das gilt den Toten all - "Rumms! Das gilt dem Glueckszufall - "Rumms! Das gilt dem Liebeslied - "Rumms! Das gilt der Ewigkeit. Hans Liep & 1957 digny beached near Kugelbarke heavy cumulous clouds hovering this was still is the edge between the Northern Ocean vikings conquered and the Elbe Rome could not in scotland Hadrian's Wall Chauci had the ELBE need no wall Berlin Belfast Palistine Mexico but defend your purpose 3 hafens Alte Liebe Neue Liebe where my father left april 22 1958 where we my mother and me followed him june save year America Hafen carved out of war darkest part of town bars and whores where my father worked and bingo and took me along at midnight own creed laws here were obayed otherwise one punishment code of honour safe hard to accept 60 years on never paranoid as colonial is ottawa 2010 fishermen on a sunny warf sea drenshed wood mending fishnets bingo playing hi's to my father chatting with everyone i never understood how ropes that big could be knotted... these men went out summer fall and winter before the vikings to fish the sholes off newfoundland they weren't discoverors but fishermen discovery was politics fishing was survival columbus needed royalty these only needed wives and mouths to feed and a structure in a small community i'm not going to do maximus here dates and names don't mean a thing history communicates a chain a structure of events like a bent old oak tree across a road sacred well beneith bow to what's begotten in the earth gaia deep begotten of the universe somehow time and place converges not for us but gaia does it's a smile that does not go away where we speculate experiment waste chalk upon a piece of black or force electrons into forms on a computer screen electrons self aware enslaved lower purpose is the cause of our society (2098)lk,l;. higher purpose does not blossom like a fower higher purpose is the gardener strong calloused hands and rationed water * 29 June 2010 and the beach was pristine once full of tar balls and they told us wear sandles (shoes are better don't take chances with the glass 1974 i did not remember it like that sand castles 1954 we ran naked to the waters edge and no one cared dug up cray fish star fish built dug out holding tanks in the soft warm mud and there were no UV warnings and peeling skin was everywhere a game sometimes on a good day you cd see schliewig-holstein and neuewerk where the wagons went at low tide and returned when he moon shifted the ocean again some got stranged in quicksand with tide in rage rolling steamrole in flat bottom boats and salty men who knew what they were doing i don't ever recall a fatality bruised egos there is nothing safe about these waters even children go out there know * 2 Oct 10 "Hier ist, wenn auch nich der Dichter, so doch der Chronist Heine zu korrigieren. Cuxhaven zaelte damals noch keine 5000 Einwohner und ausserdem lebte die Siedlung auch nicht mehr von der Gnade Hamburgs. Die Gemeinde hatte ihren Prinzen gefunden, der den jahrhundertelangen Schlaf beendete: Iin den Jahren 1808-1811 und 1814-1821 war der Buergermeister und Maire von Hamburg, Dr. Amandus Augustust Abendroth, Amtmann auf Schloss Ritzenbuettel." * Photo I There is a panel Der Hafen um 1845. View from the east Tannenhof, Badenhaus, Leuchtturm and Alte Liebe. Woodcut. Wooden ships. Calm sea. Gulls between cracks in the clouds. Wooden sheds. Fishermen. Row boats. A couple watching. And then the same area today from airview. * It's a sound track to a moment how important is it? now? very. but apart. it cuts into the heart. what one does not understand. not u n d e r s t a n d. is how vital this is. is. when churning memories from afar. * Photo II mending nets on the dock. cumulus clouds rising. Boats quiet on the water. Did these before Columbus sail to Newfoudland in search of richer waters? * Photo III cute little girl. chubby cheeks. blond hair blown in gentle breeze. holding beach ball. Sonne - Seewind - Saltwasser - schlick did i know you? you look like a girl down the street from where i lived... i remember the smile. when we played. your eyes smiled. * Photo IV Es ist der Turm. Neuwerk. Am Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts von Hamburg erbaut... built. 14th century. Neuwerk. on a clear day. and at low tide they hold horse races and horse drawn carts cart tourists there. * Photo V Rathaus. As a boy I remember walking past it with my mother. I remember the flags and the ivy clinging to the walls. I remember the ivy. Cold day it was. Under the arch. I remember that also. But there was no ivy. Just branches like bony fingers clinging desperately to stone. * This is to introduce the town. it doesn't. i must formuate another view of it. from the beach from the river. from the mind. my mind. * when the fog rolls in off the north sea it's sometimes so thick that when it rolls by one side of the street can disappear and the other be in sunshine. and when you extend your arm into it your arm disappears as if cut off. as children, when this happened, we used to play a game of hide and go seek, running in and out. we had to be careful not to run in too far lest we got lost. in the fog you dis- appeared. could not even see yourself. some- times we would hold hands with someone out- side who would lead us down the street or down a field and we didn't know where we were going but always had a trusting hand to guide us there. * in duhnen the mental hospital stood the tallest building in town. near the beach. in the town square where the old well crowned its medieval visage. now dry and filled with garbage. and the hospital is gone. that hospital where anastasia stayed for many years. or anna anderson whichever you prefer. i believe she had a room overlooking the watt to neuwerk and beyond and she would have seen the fog roll in, white and slowly, like a cumulous cloud crawling with defiance over the north sea waters and enveloping the warm beach sand and crawling over den deich and then crawling like vines around the asylum. she must have stood by her window and saw the world disappear. her world. before her eyes -- lingering. * it was a different world, or the same world, but a diffrent time and space. quiet at night. no sirens blurting some impending doom. no cars with remote door locks annoying sleep destroying intrusions. and there was history everywhere. living history. rebuilding history. a new beginning carved from the insanity of war. here it was all peace and quiet and no one cared too much for the recent past. for anastasia her fog was not yet her destiny. she had not yet revieled herself to the world. she was still that woman found. in a fog. lost alone and swept through confusion of a state of grace the world had lost. a grand time still remembered. and in cuxhaven duhnen in an asylum she wove her imperial tapestry. * beach baskets. blinding sun. gulf stream breeze. white hot sand. sea-mud soothing aching feet. children play naked. men and women change naked into beach things. no one minds the other. sand castles built. decorated with sea shells. tourists relaxing. people playing in the swelling waves crested white eagle wings flapping. ships from everywhere in the world far off coming into or coming out of the elbe - river that stopped mighty romans. chauci country - on their way to hamburg. mighty city. reeperbahn. soon beatles. but those too large dock at cuxhaven. neue liebe. where we left for canada. 1958. where many left searching for a new life. my father, a barber, made good there. * even when in the summer with the chill air it was needed to wear a thick sweather. but it was a dry air. the south breezes cleared the humidity, and when it did it was cold. that juxtoposition of sea and air brought the fogs, a blanket, over the city. one renewed oneself. every spring. when the trawlers left for the grand banks of newfoundland. stayed away for months. and when they returned the fish market was all abuzz with traders, buyers, speculators. and the fish stands at almost every corner were open with fresh smoked herring, smoked eel and other delicasies I would buy and bring my father each night he had to work late. i would take bring our spaniel. we had to leave him behind. sadly. when we left june 1958. * my father worked late almost every night. it was rare for him to be home before midnight. barbers shops stayed open in those days till the last customer left and opened early. they closed for two hours in the afternoon, but even closed my father worked, only knowing he might have some time for supper when no new customers could come in. i would visit him after school and was fascinate by the empty display bottles or hair oil or empty tubes of hair cream. and other items. further down the same street was an slaughter house. you could smell death a block away. and on sundays they would wash the blood away to the street drain. i hated that. ever since our landlord chased a sow around the yard downstairs to slaughter for winter sausage. i covered my ears to block the desperate squeals. then death. * one night in 1958 my father took me to the window look up he said pointing to a moving light that's sputnik * and there was christmas. open window. concordia hotel across the cobbled street. sailors singing drunken o du frueliche and stille nacht heilige nacht always at 7pm and we continued that tradition even in canada. i don't do that nowadays. i never play christmas music. in fact i hardly anymore celebrate christmas. it was just so special back then. a recovered memory i not want to chance again. and that night in our garret when the tree caught fire and my father put it out with a pail of water from the sink. the sink we used to piss in when the one toilet in the house between floors was occupied. such where the days. no longer here. and my mother angry but accepted the predicament. * drunken sailors and prostitutes. the harbour was a riot in the night. it exploded into song and sex. sometimes these ladies would escort me and bingo to my father's barber shop late at night to see that we were safe. but safe was not a concern in cuxhaven where doors remained unlocked and children played unaccompanied by adults through the day and sometimes in the darkness of the cobbled almost barron streets. there was no concern, as today that something would happen to them. the neighbors kept a watchful eye. and the drunken sailors were easily put in their place by a slap in the face. it was a time of innocence grown out of tragedy. out of war and hardship. no one wanted to be alone. * when i was three my father too me to the harbour. the alte liebe. and there is a photo of him and me he holding to the railing me pointing at a trawler entering the harbour pointing he wore his wwII trench coat and i remember the captain of the traw- lew waving at us. my father at that time was a night watchman in the darest places of the docks ensuring no one stole or lurked or did any damage. he would go from shed to another and then nspect the trains and then in a dingy inspect the boats and ships once with me there. i remember the darness and the rocking of the boat as we made our way between giant steel moored and rocking in the moons reflection in the water never forgotten in my mind and in my dreams. * my father used to recite heine and took me to a dick and doff movie on sunday afternoons. they were funny. but the afternoon he took me to see pennochio i couldn't understand and left the theatre crying. my father took me home and my mother switched on the radio and i listened intently to the classic music and then identified each piece as it was playing. my parents were astounded. i had never heard this before. and that, or any of the pieces played. it just came to me this was mozart, this was beethoven, this brahms and other pieces. how do you know this they asked i said i don't know. and they were amazed and i sensed treated me differently from then. i was all but five years old. how could i now the consequence of this? * there was a bunker build so strong in the war they couldn't tear it down. it was still there in nineteen seventy four when i visited. nothing not dynamite anything they did still standing. don't now here but in Berlin they converted just such a bunker into a night club and a hotel. what you can't tear down you must reuse. simple tactic, but the war was hell for everyone. especially the civilian population torn between the propeganda and the "liberation" both had failings. my mother never could believe that hitler ordered the destruction of the jews. her ancestry was jewish. her mother was. and she was almost assassinated by a jewish butcher in a gestapo colonel's uniform. she understood survival wasn't easy. but never that. * there was a skylight in the it kitchen i looked up at when the dentist removed some of my teeth. no anestetic in those days just my father holding my head steady while the dentist put his pliers in my mouth and yanked. pain and the bright blue sky was all i remember of that day. my father never did with dentists. too expensive he said. and the day he tied a string around a bad tooth and to the doornob and asked me to go outside and yank the door shut while he sat steady in a chair i will not forget. you did good he said and gave me his extracted tooth which i kept in a jar. now some fifty four fifty five years later remembering this with the pain of an extracted root canal and the swelling that follows. know the pain. * next door where we lived was a facory. i can't recall what they "factored" but we, just kids knew the way in. and we played there. up the ladder to the loft. marie the neighbour girl was frighted, hans the big kid laughed. girls are always afraid he said: stop your whining and crawl up. i extended my hand, she took it and i helped her up. stupid hans said can't do things alone. like a dream dispersed the memories fade...somehow one saturday we were caught. we bolted for the door and made it out...except for, you guessed it, hans. no use defending him we thought. our parents were a differnet matter. trespassing is a dangerous activity. what would happen if you got arrested? my mother nervous as a hawk put the fear back in. * kids. each january after christmas we used to gather all the neighbourhood christmas trees and drag them to a field next to the public baths - no showers or fancy bathtubs then - and build cabins out of them until the authorities would come and tear them down. began a yearly ritual: them and us,defiant. we would build, they tear down. tell our parents. get scolded. next year start all over again. and being next to the public baths was a hilarious plus. especially in the winter when the men and women (different doors) would run out naked in the yard throwing snowballs at each other and then retreat to the steaming swelter that escaped the doors. we kids laughed and laughed. so funny seeing these adults naked. it is getting cold marie said, let's go back in. * in the spring, after the structures we built were dis- mantled. i let a photographer take my picture, in the field. i held a toy gun. i'm a cowboy i said. you sure are, he gave me his card and said to give it to my parents. but they were unhappy i did such a "stupid" thing. it will cost us money my father said. not understanding i went out and played soccer on the cobbled street with uwe my friend until was called in. but once the photographer came to deliver the photos in person some days later they were less upset. never do that again my father said. never did. but life goes on. kids keep playing, keep doing stupid things. not hard. playd ring-a-round the rosie in that field among other games. it was our field. our own territory. never left it till one day they shut it down. new building. kids go home. went home. [562] * there was an apple tree in my best friends yard with a sawed off branch i grew just tall enough to reach and climb into the branches shaking apples loose it was an autumn ritual - we laughed who bit the worm and sometimes chased the girls throwing apples at them not to hurt - just missing - thought when they threw they were right on target. all in fun. uwe's father was "Neptun mit seinem Gefolge, um die Prieltaufe vorzunehmen." great razor shaving foam off tourists. they lapped up every moment. but kids we were and adults played their games as we did ours. and uwe's backyard was our fantacy. one tree in the yard, and one tree in Confederation Park across from City Hall in Ottawa so much later binding present past. won or lost? *