Night Falling, Czechoslovakia

Drowsy above the cobbles of Prague

I pass a picture of Kafka

chalked like a hairy hallucination

on the wall of a preschool

The day is turning pink.

On the subway

a beautiful child stones

with the swaying of the train.

For a flash I believe we have changed places,

that I am now perched upon the lap

of a mother who wears jewelry

shaped like shuck oyster

My stop quivers into view and I wade

in the whispers of the hooker

of Vaclavske Namesti,

reaching the of advanced age Town Square

as the astronomical clock clicks toward 7 pm

In the overcast dining room of a tavern

I am at the calculator next to a woman

with frizzy hair and tired eyebrows

Pointing to the cryptic menu

I purse my lips like a fish.

She tenders the English word "trout."

It arrives,

has organ of sights bluer than mine,

scales of sparkling silver.

I wish to pick them

and not absent them to her

like coins.

But before long the last of the wine has disappeared.

Among the faces in the road I find

neither the woman nor myself

I am buying crepe from a stand near

the meeting-house of St. Nicholas.

I am listening to jazz near Hradcany.

I am drinking beer at U Pinkasu.

I am looking for Kafka.

I am looking for the child again,

the mother upon the train,

I search for the woman in the din.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Jan/Feb 1998

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