You approach the world
with open arms and hope
it wants you. Hope to be
asked in to sit amongst the
fine furniture. The world is
busy and polite and believes
in independence. You want
to make friends, be
boisterous. You'd expected
something a little more
gregarious but you'll
take a photo anyway to show
your friends. Here it is.
Here's the world on a good
day, turned slightly
away, but this is no
offence, merely the sun was
in its eyes and it turned
briefly to avoid being
blinded by it.
Home
What you think
about. Where
you come from.
Leave from.
Home. Where
the heart beats
hardest. It
becomes a
small room
in your head.
You visit
often. They always
let you in.
From behind the curtains
of Germany came
the family.
My father's grandparents
walking the streets of
Hamburg thinking
New Zealand
New Zealand
My mother's family
stepping out for
London then
Australia then
New Zealand
intersecting at a
church dance he
tall blond and
gaunt she dark
dark hair dark
eyes in a new
dress may I
have the pleasure
we will we
do they said.
Where did our family come from?
They were Danish
German
from an annexed part of Germany
Schleswig Holstein
Danish
German
Danish
German
There is an isle of Bornholm
and a large furniture store with our surname.
So they say.
Are our relatives, distant though they are,
involved in the business of chairs and lounge
suites and 'occasional tables' and tables for
dining and tables for all occasions in Germany?
All our childhoods a chorus of young girls' voices
a chorus to skip by: German
Danish
German
Danish
German
They might have been married
in St Michaelis Church with its
golden scrolls and
angels her dress wall-
white if he half closed his
eyes all he saw was her face
smiling at him saying
I do
yes
I do
Or in Katharinenkirchhof
down a street called
Grimm. She came here tall
in her white dress to this
church with half a golden
spire, high vaulted white
ceiling with gold
stars, coloured light
firing in from the windows
saying I do
I do in all the colours
light picked her up
carried her ablaze
to him.
St Jacobi
clock on the spire with a star
and the moon on its hands.
Krempdorf, near Hamburg
one of the kick-off points
for the family
long ploughed fields strike out
for the horizon
'Krempdorf has no records.,
It is very small.
It is a village.
Krempe is a town. They
will have records.
But not of Krempdorf
because it is a
village. Not a town.
It is very small.
It is nothing.'
This road they passed along
on their way to
the village.
The wind is very bad
today yes
yes, he nods, yes
From the Register of Births at Krempe
Members of two families with the same name:
1773 Metta ------------------1835 Catharina
1776 Johna ------------------1836 Anna
1779 Albert ------------------1837 Anna Wiebke
1780 Metta ------------------1838 Catharina
1782 Peter ------------------1839 Claus
1786 Clause ------------------------Johann Otto
1788 Cicilia ------------------1840 Hans Hinrich
1792 Anna ------------------------Anna
1802 Silja ------------------1842 Magdalena
1804 Totgeburt-----------------------Maria Margretha
1806 Albert ------------------1843 Johann
1808 Carsten ------------------1845 Johann
1809 Totgeburt-----------------------Abelona
1809 Johan ------------------1846 Abel
1811 Hinrich ------------------1847 Metta Abeline
Magdalena-------------------------1849 Johann
1813 Tim-----------------------------Margaretha
1815 Cocilia ------------------1852 Abeline
1818 Abelona-------------------1853 Peter
1823 Albert ------------------1857 Johanna Luise
1829 Cathrine Margareta--------1870 Wilhemena Cathrine
Anna Magdalena------------1871 Hinrich Hans
1831 Peter Otto----------------1874 Johann Hinrich
1833 Hinrich
'A family Bornholdt still here,
see, Bornholdt and Hinrich too
is his name. They have been married
for 50 years. They have a golden
wedding.'
Into a house which smells of apples.
Bowls of potatoes on the kitchen floor.
But this is not your family.
Yours is long gone.
Later at the buro
we drink coffee and eat
plum cake beside the registers
of births and deaths, look at
an atlas and you point
to New Zealand. Oh
says Frau Bear many miles
on the other side.
Put on your best dress and go to visit
your great great grandparents who are not
expecting you.
The family comes through
the fields to meet you.
Bertha in a red dress.
Abeline on her way to marry
carries flowers.
Margaretha lies in the grass
by the barn dreaming of Frank
in Trittau
Hinrich on his way to sell
cigars in Hamburg. You pass him
on the road.
A woman walks past with a wheelbarrow
full of sweet peas.
Next to the station a man mulches
apples with slow strokes of
the shovel then adds them to his dark
compost heap.
At the station a man and teenage boy sit.
I ask about the train to Hamburg.
Soon, they say.
The man pats the ground beside him.
I sit down.
He drinks beer, points at the young boy and says
English.
Both work in Krempe, live at
Itzehoe. The boy works in admin
which sometimes is not so good, and the man
he is a carpenter.
He used to be a sailor - Liverpool, Jamaica,
until he had his accident. Holds up his right
arm and waggles his little finger - the only
one left on his hand.
Pass your great grandfather Hinrich on his way to work
at the Pipitea Wharf Freezing Company, dreaming of
Landunsbrucken, St Pauli,
of the farm at Krempdorf, his mother stewing apples,
his father ploughing
dreaming of the attic room above the grocer's shop in
Hamburg
where he lived,
where he was when his mother died
'where he was when she fell down'.
In the business of groceries and cigars
where he was when he married Emma at St Pauli
stepping through the blackened ruins of the cathedral
the spire black as night against
day sky
to New Zealand
to where you remember them
in a dark room
with a canary.
Here's Hinrich
just arrived in New Zealand aged
seven. He's lost for words.
Language abandons him in this
new country. You in turn
flounder among unfamiliar sounds
in Germany - over your head in
a tongue not your own.
Hinrich abandons New Zealand as
a young man and returns to Germany,
though later to return.
You also abandon.
Here's Hinrich as a child
in Hamburg feeding swans by
the Binnen Alster.
The long arms of the family rest
along the shoulders of the world.
Meet your grandfather Henry Eugen (Harry)
as a young boy on the Oriental Terrace
zig zag. He's on his way home to
McIntyre Avenue after swimming in
the salt water Te Aro baths, laughing
and laughing, running home to tell
his brothers about the octopus getting in
to the pool through the pipe.
Running down Marjoribanks Street on a day in 1912
on his way to work as a lolly boy at the Opera
House.
On his way to grow up and leave school at 13
start his mechanical and general engineering
apprenticeship. Eager. Runs towards
the bridges he will build. Spends five years as
an apprentice and one as a journeyman
emerges at the start of the Orongorongo
Tunnel in 1922 and begins work.
Again you see him
on his way to design the Thorndon pool
where your sister now swims in her bluegreen cap
a wave moving through the water.
Here he is studying the one
white shoe abandoned on the zig zag.
It's been there for weeks, the colour slowly
leaking into the concrete. A woman's shoe.
Next time you see him he's on his way to marry
your grandmother who has only one leg and on it
one white shoe.
*
Return home and Harry goes
outside, shutting the door
firmly behind him.
Drive to Lake Ferry and along the coast
to Cape Palliser.
Climb white steps high to the
lighthouse where your father works the
light as a young boy.
Back along the road to Ngawi and here's
Harry putting out to sea with his
brother - off to get the flour from
the store, off to lose it over
the side.
You wave and
wave they raise
a hand.