Daumenbreite (for Reni)
‘Pancakes? You really say peace, joy and pancakes?’
‘Yes. Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen.’
‘And what’s that word I like for water...?’
Across the Shannon river, the train
reaches with another translation.
‘We call freshwater sweetwater. SuBwasser.’
As she slowly unzips her bag
I touch a sugarcube to my coffee
and watch it soak up the river.
High, white girders of the bridge wheel by
as she leans to me with ‘part of a wall’:
a concrete knuckle wrapped in plastic.
‘I knew you wouldn’t get over it.
Everyone wants a piece of the Wall.’
We draw in to Galway station, laughing:
‘I didn’t think you would give me an inch.’
‘Well, since we use metric, I didn’t.’ (‘Inch’
and Zentimeter being miles apart.)
‘Then give me something close to English measures.’
‘How about Daumenbreite...?’
‘How big is that?’
She takes my thumb between two fingers.
We narrow it down to what is between us.
Page(s) 53
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