#lotte kramer

[essygie]

boy with orange

"A boy holding an orange in his hands Has crossed the border in uncertainty." from Boy with Orange (out of Kosovo) by Lotte Kramer

[asuddenline]

'Silence,' Lotte Kramer

Today the river slinks like oil, Hardly a current in its mud As autumn leaves crawl on its face. I left them in their blinding talk To meet adopted path and sky, And bend the grass for light and space. Here I can hold the air with birds, Still, solitary in their flight Without men's calculated race. Now only sun and water rule Unchallenged over silent pain: And the burst cry of a grey swan.

Lotte Kramer (1923--) was born in Mainz, Germany, and has lived in England since 1939 when she escaped the Nazi regime by a Kindertransport train. She started her writing career late in life, beginning in 1979, when what she called the 'ice-break of words' forced her to confront the traumatic experiences of Nazi Germany and the death of her parents and extended family during the Holocaust.

Rivers are a common theme in Kramer's poetry: in 'Rhine' she imagines the river as an unwielding force outside of the destructive whims of man: 'Always the father of my being/Unchanging in your majestic song.' In 'Three Rivers,' she charts her life by describing the three rivers that have been major features of it, including the Nene in Peterborough where she lives: 'Alien at first / But soon a slow companion / Oozing muddy arms.'  Rivers are a contradiction--ancient and permanent, yet ever-changing--and this juxtaposition rules over 'Silence' as the speaker meditates on the central image of the poem. The first three stanzas all end on a rhyme, a curious rhyme-scheme which creates a flowing but halting rhythm, emphasized by the slightly erratic pentameter that Kramer writes in. 

This movement punctuated by stillness creates a retrospective feel to the poem. With reminders of time such as 'Today,' and 'I left them' we gain a sense of a person looking both forward and backward in time. The images of movement throughout the poem ('slinks like oil', 'crawl on its face', 'bend the grass') juxtapose with the third stanza's descriptions of holding 'the air with birds / Still, solitary in their flight,' where we have a vivid sense of the speaker actively, possibly consciously, forming memories of what they see.

The 'silent pain' of the last stanza challenges me: does this suggest the speaker is unable to come to terms with a traumatic event in their past? 'Sun and water,'--usually images of hope and cleansing--rule over this pain but the grand descriptions of the river paired with the slow, steady rhythm of the poem create a sense of the sublime. 'Unchallenged' suggests that the river, and nature as a whole, are simply indifferent to the pain of the speaker. The break of the rhyme scheme (and cadence) in the final line creates dissonance--but should this be judged against the methodic, meditative images of the first three stanzas?

The 'burst cry of the grey swan' is such a challenging image that it really feels like each reader will come away from it with a different perspective--should 'burst' be an indication of shock and surprise, or of a great release? Considering the careful reminiscence of the rest of the poem I am inclined to see this shift to the definite present as an indication of great emotions coming to the surface, but also an understanding of change occuring in a great, unsentimental world.