Lucy Hamilton

 

A Road in Berlin

On my daily route to or from Oranienstrasse via the Penny Supermarkt for a bottle of cheap dry white to drive The force that through the green fuse. A road equidistant from the Kurfürstendamm of my once-a-week treat at the Ice Cream Parlour and the Kurfürstendamm of the glamorous prostitutes. The road with the Ringbahn train screeching along the elevated tracks, sparks flying; with the Turkish gastarbeiter, with all the little ateliers and artisan shops: the cobblers and picture-framers, the sewing-machines and joinery. Everywhere movement. Old men struggling with ladders and planks of wood; young men balancing massive panes of glass; little trucks bouncing over cobblestones; bicycles, tricycles and mopeds; the heady smells of paint, rubber tyres and sawdust; the pervasive whir and whine of sewing-machines, of lathes shaping and scraping and moulding in a symphony of industry. That was the road with the mad women where at any time of day you'd see them hanging out of third-floor windows, screaming and gesticulating. The artisans ignored them. If they glanced up, they looked down again. I never saw them laugh or make a 'knowing' gesture. Yes, that was the road where lost women popped out of windows like cuckoos from the clocks of ancient minutes.

 

Copyright © 2008, Lucy Hamilton.

Lucy Hamilton lives in Kent, where she teaches international students at Ashford School. Selections from her translation/sonnet version of the prose work The Legend of Lalla Maghnia following the Arab Tradition are published in Modern Poetry in Translation (3/8, 2007) and I am twenty people! (Enitharmon, 2007).