I have travelled the world
and felt at home in many places.
But when I stood on the wide steps
of my grandparents’ former home
in pre-war Pomerania
I trembled with recognition and recollection.
This old villa had somehow
seeped into my bloodstream.
Memories flooded in,
childhood stories came alive,
my hair was seaweed-silky,
and my skin amber-tanned.
I was born here in 1940
before the Soviet army came through.
Only the cathedral and a few neighborhoods
survived the war.

I will die and be buried in a faraway country
among people I love now.
But perhaps from time to time my soul may wing its way
back to the Pomeranian sand dunes
to frolic among the whitecaps
of the blue Baltic Sea where my journey began.

 

Each family needs a historian
who records the individual stories,
complete with beginnings and endings,
then connects these separate lives
like links in a chain,
held together by others.