Praha, golden citygrown from burned
wood leads to Vysehrad
the castle place, or highest garden
where rows of reposed refuge
bear like solemn symphonies of silence
the fonts that limn birth and death.
Far into this garden
cradle of a mind turned past
among some of the rarest flowers
sleeps the poet father of song underneath weeds growing
from a perpendicular roof of stone.
An obelisk of beatitudes, it seems
serves as the lasting faculty recalling
the pile of slumbering bone
composed from the breath of centuries
to give to us, for solace, his sonorous melodies.
But then, a group of students
children still, in uniform
march by in rows of two
and past and by they walk, determined
Youth, all ways ahead, not back.
For centuries you’ve mended nothing
but your grave, you
the poet of people whose cities
moved beyond the walls you cite.
But wait. You are remembered on this day.
Watch - the busy legs of an ant
scurrying across your dank dark blanket,
following at least some purpose of its own.
Prague ©06/00 Tatjana Greiner
