mah maou

How from my makeshift home,
the camp in Kinsale,
I couldn’t picture the rooftops,

Buying strange meats
from the grocer in Horoměřice,
abstaining from vowel sounds,
soliciting tight-lipped, polite smiles.
Dobré, Americký, Naschledanou.

Riding the metro with mushrooms and mustaches,
Americans with iPods,
striped hipster black and whites,
under kafiyahs dangling inert, stoic,
Italians with speakerphone voices,
Slovaks with thick wrists and twinkling eyes,
laid-back Germans with bronze tits
and ham hock lunches.

Then on down the hill and into Dejvická,
to transfer lines, pass under the Vltava
and into the Zlatého Tygra,
candelabra casting shadows,
deep, stenciled pilsner casks,
pencil tallys on coasters.
Tak, tak! Pán, your glass…
Ano, ano, na zdraví!

Waking up on the bus in motion,
hocking bicycle parts at the Holešovice bazaar,
secondhand books in back pockets,
a wallet full of crowns from the printing press,
Flex, flexo, Englicky, Česká.

The golem in Malá Strana,
Kafka’s ghost,
twittering, fluttering along,
cold hands in pockets,
eyed askance amid scurried footsteps.

Writing letters into distant shoeboxes
with inscrutable postage,
destined to go unanswered,
poste restante.

Sitting on the roof of the flat, smoking
and watching planes descend into Ruzyně,
BBC World News blaring G8, Israel and the Jena 6.

And dreaming most of all
of that morning,
when birds sang brightly our departure
and I walked up the hill
from your house,
Forever to be gone.