Poet Ulrich Wendt writes about his mother:
These two poems, Opening Passage and Gleaning were inspired by the life of my mother Ursula Wendt, a poet and artist from East Prussia
Toward the end of the Second World War in Europe , Ursula brought ten people to safety in the west in advance of the invading Russian troops. She came to Canada Canada
Gleaning deals with the hungry years between 1945 to 1948, when one in four refugee children in that area died of the consequences of malnutrition and exposure.
Ursula Wendt died in Nova Scotia, November 30, 2010 at the age of 93.
Opening Passage
On a day this clear, you can see everything.
Beyond the silver-blue line on the horizon is the homeland.
From there, a grim ragged rest of field-grey soldiers held open the passage
for those few who still had luck on their side.
For in the black waters beyond Cap Arcona, lie bones.
In the soft, amber-laden sand, lie bones.
In ruined Koenigsberg, where Emanuel Kant
once balanced reason with the cold, precise necessity of experience –
balanced reason with a kind of patient, careful passion, lie bones.
Where ice once broke to swallow up a living line –
horses, wagons, people -
losing at last their race with the coming, awful day, lie bones.
Where my first-born son came howling into the world –
hungry to live, hungry for milk and blood, lie bones.
And where the first, the finest house once stood, where soft rich earth
threw up the most fantastical fruit and flowers,
lie bones and bones and bones.
Children, listen! Fortune also wants its price.
We, the lucky, exiled dispossessed must balance passion with reason -
must hold a soft, unbitter, gracious heart.
For is it not also a kind of evil, to only weep on your own stones
and not on the stones of others?
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