In the light of bridges

AuszugA FEW WORDS In some respects this book is an attempt to round off a chapter of my life that began about thirty years ago. As facts and fiction about Hamburg have been written and re-written, I thought it might be fitting to try conveying my impressions of the city in poetry, prose and drama – fragments of contemporary life as I see it. It’s late summer. I’m on my bike by the Elbe watching the compelling sun sink over us like a silent vigil – like good lyrics. I’d love a group photo but we’d lose each other in the crush, and most of us are too fragile to be left to ourselves. Time is at my window and I’m about to open the shutters to see if the nature of the city can be revealed through the eyes of an outsider. Perhaps my lens can be wider for this very reason. On a good day I wake up seeing flocks of eighty-year-old couples handin-hand on every bridge and street corner. On a bad day it’s raining; there are grumbling bureaucrats, half-hidden behind desks, and clientsstruggling for the right word or pleasing phrase. I love the dizziness of streetlights in the city the way I might fear them, if I were a beast on a busy country road in wet November. I sometimes occupy my father’s, my grandfather’s and my great-grandfather’s housein Ireland – and all of their lights have gone out. Now, there’s athought! My pen and I have become lovers. Let’s see where it takes me. St. Nikolai, Patron Saint of sailors, come to my aid.