Remembering Gunter Grass, some German man

What is it about this German 
man that I should remember him?
What, ever, has he done for me?
Who in the hell is Gunter Grass?

What are gurkins? Pickles. Hmmm.
What is it about this German?
Could not they just call them pickles?
Who in the hell is Gunter Grass?

Dill pickles are best. No codfish
thank you. Caught Baltic fresh are they?
What is it about this German?
Who in the hell is Gunter Grass?

Who in the hell is Gunter Grass?
Pickles and codfish, Baltic Seas,
no common law or honest wife.
What is it about this German?

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This is from a dVerse prompt: And for today’s MTB prompt we are continuing with the 16th theme and writing a Quatern

“The Quatern (Latin= 4 each) is a French verse form, possibly from the Middle Ages since it is so close to the Retourne and Kyrielle. It also employs a refrain…. from stanza to stanza.”

Poetry style:

16 lines in total
divided into 4 quatrains (4 line stanzas)
8 syllables per line (iambic tetrameter an optional metre)
1st line is the refrain which moves consecutively downward through the 4 stanzas as Line I L2, L3, L4
usually unrhymed but this is at your discretion

Poetry Theme

An optional suggestion is to engage with one of Gunter Grass’s poems:

taking a quote as an epigram
write an answer to/ response to one of his poems (for, against or along the same lines/style)

I combined the two and wrote a Quatern as an epigram to the following quote from Gunter Grass

...”Remember me, over plates of boiled codfish, 
write my epitaph in sprigs of fresh dill
 when you finish the dish to serve up to your dinner guests. 
Remember me, 
when you cut the gherkins to accent the meal: 
the salt of my sorrow, the bitter vinegar of my lot. 
When you visit the fishmonger, remember me. 
The common-law wife you never made into an honest woman. 
Remember my un-common recipes, cooked for you, 
back in the days when fish fresh from the Baltic 
wasn’t priced beyond the means of a poet,...”

Hope you enjoy!