It’s true I desire to go far away
and mutter to myself in the wind,
taking the long train of myself off,
lost among strangers and distances.
If I called myself now on the phone
my voice would say I’m not at home just now
and what I then called now would now be then,
every moment its own in another time zone of the heart.
But no I was never in Prague, never lost
in its blowsy statuary, never visited
the House of the Bell, nor drank the absence of absinthe,
never ate the Executioner’s Special.
I was never the King’s Jew.
I was a limping man on a stick
with a broken eyeglass, just
an old dĕdek with his tobacco.
Nic moc, no big deal. The city
a blue rainy haze of lights, Strasne dobry,
awesome, a wolf wind howling over the tiles,
crack of flags like gunfire, bells.
Nĕkecam. I met a tall man walking
with a tiny cactus in his fist.
The chambermind will bring the cattle.
Would you like grilled meat on the needle?
Messages: among the scrambled stones
and bladed upright Hebrew a folded note:
let the hatred cease. Crows overhead
sawing the air, the souls of ancient rabbis.
Do prdele, the worst you can say,
lost in blue toothy Prague.
Sere medvĕd lese? May all your sons
be bartenders. Nosī papež legračnī klobouk?