It feels like yesterday, that he was alive. I remember him, the last time he and my mother came for lunch, maybe a week before his death.
His death. Car accident. Immediate death. Almost no visible marks. Head against dashboard.
But this isn’t about his death. It’s about his life. About him.
Intelligent. Caring. Passionate. So much longing.
A few years after his death, I put 9 of him poems online. Most of them are about longing. I will end with the one I translated.
He left so many poems. Hundreds. Neatly typed. A full box.
But he did not even have one poetry reading, though a friend offered to arrange one. He didn’t feel ready.
My father. He cared about the world, about justice, about fairness. About ending world hunger. He loved opera. He loved Elvis Presley. Mozart. He wanted to know, more and more as he got older, what was the real truth about things, including about the content of the Bible.
I remember his passionate intense talking, about whatever he was conveying.
He knew so many things that were not generally known. Like about the firebombing of Dresden. I remember not believing him until, at least a decade later, I read and later saw Slaughterhouse 5 - by Kurt Vonnegut, an American soldier, prisoner of war, who survived the firebombing of Dresden, 5 floors below ground level - in Slaughterhouse 5. The plot of the book and also the movie are mixed with sci fi fantasy, which I don’t remember at all. I vividly remember about the firebombing of Dresden.
His thoughts, his beliefs, his huge knowledge did not get out into the wide world. I knew them. A few people knew them - anyone who knew him knew about what he cared about. He loved to talk, to share his knowledge, thoughts, beliefs.
But that was it.
My father’s legacy. His passion. His concerns. His creativity.
And then, on the other side, no getting out into the world with so much of it.
My father, myself. I always felt so connected to him, in many ways so very like him.
A powerful legacy - both sides of it. It has been, and still is, quite a journey, having gifts so much like his, and also having a hard time finding ways to get out into the world. I have taken so many steps. It feels like - still such a distance to go.
It was a gift to my father, after his death, putting 9 of his poems online, where they got, for years, about 10,000 views a year and still continue to get thousands of views yearly.
Today one gift to my father is letting you know about him, and bringing one of his poems to you - the one I translated. So below is the poem, first in the translation and then in the original German. (Though my parents, who came to Canada in their 20s, were soon fluent in English, when my father wrote poetry, that was almost always in German.)
At the very end, is another gift to my father.
Now, the poem.
Longing – longing for riches,
For love and for luck.
Longing for leaving, for far distant shores.
And longing to return, longing for home.Longing, so powerful,
You trouble me so.
Yet longing, so strong,
You may have luck in tow.You come. No one's called you.
You come from the soul.
You open and close
The doors of the heart, of the soul.You're heavy. You weigh on the soul -
So heavy a weight.
Yet when you leave,
I feel … so empty, not light.Oh longing, you can't be understood,
Not by reason, by thought. There's no reasonable why.
That's why sometimes one longs -
So full of longing - to perish, to give up and die.Erwin Schieder
Bromont, March 27, 1989, 7:15 p.m
Translation - Elsa Schieder - October 2009
MY FATHER’S WORDS
Man sehnt sich nach Reichtum
Nach Liebe nach Glück,
Sehnt sich nach der Ferne -
Der Heimat zurück.Oh mächtige Sehnsucht,
Du, die so betrübt.
Oh mächtige Sehnsucht,
Du, die so beglückt!
Du kommst ohne Rufen
Aus der Seele hervor,
Du öffnest und schließest
Zum Herzen das Tor.Du drückst auf die Seele
Des Menschen gar schwer,
Doch bist Du verschwunden -
Fühlt er sich – so leer!Oh Sehnsucht, Dich kann wohl
Vernunft nicht versteh’n,
Drum möchte man manchmal
Voll Sehnsucht vergeh’n.Erwin Schieder
Bromont, March 27, 1989, 7:15 p.m.
A final gift to my father. This is something that happened to my father when he was 15. I would like you to know of it. This story is not just about him. It became part of me, though our lives were so very different. The story starts about one minute into the video:
Posted April 3, 2023
Lovely poem!
Longing yearning aching was so powerful and so much truth. Thank you for sharing. You were lucky to have such a great father.