PICKINGS

Poetry from NHI publications

MAY IN PRAGUE
It is May In Prague and I cannot leave dawn forget-me-nots on this mute voiceless hour with a liquid silence poised to a moist goodbye kiss. I begin to spy on Mozart's chamber suspecting he is still here eating an orange at the piano with a red ant lodged on bare-iced sheets of his own Requiem. Across the river Kafka's ghost ascends enamoured of pain's mimicry unlocked pronouns jettison a short, considerate, notarised, death. A grandmother asks a girlish question as I give her modest roses amongst this compass of a warm day I search the lyric fields but there are stop signs everywhere except for a post of circumspection exiled after forty years of rain yet anxious to hear the bells above an echo of human anguish near a century of war memorials.
B.Z. NIDITCH

MAY IN PRAGUE

It is May In Prague
and I cannot leave
dawn forget-me-nots
on this mute voiceless hour
with a liquid silence
poised to a moist goodbye kiss.

I begin to spy on Mozart's chamber
suspecting he is still here
eating an orange at the piano
with a red ant lodged
on bare-iced sheets
of his own Requiem.

Across the river
Kafka's ghost ascends
enamoured of pain's mimicry
unlocked pronouns jettison
a short, considerate, notarised, death.

A grandmother asks a girlish question
as I give her modest roses
amongst this compass of a warm day
I search the lyric fields
but there are stop signs everywhere
except for a post of circumspection
exiled after forty years of rain
yet anxious to hear the bells
above an echo of human anguish
near a century of war memorials.

B.Z. NIDITCH

from
On The Eve
ISBN 0 903610 07 8

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