Something, even much,
was already in the air
when 1989 loomed,
but it must have been
still some earlier Spring
when a friend of mine
took me for a stroll
through Prague along
the Pathway of the Kings
behind the Horologe
and there to a passage,
narrow, dark—others
would easily overlook—
with a little side door
to a Gothic cellar bellow,
serving as a dingy boat
for a Bohemian bar
plunged then into haze
puffed by smoking guests
and junkies with an aptitude
for alchemy and magic art.
And there this quite well-known,
but married Don Juan of Prague,
immediately picked on a pair
of black-clad nymphs
who had seen and done
quite much both on that day
and by their lifetime years’
modest combined count.
And so simply and so fast
he told them to go with us
to a flat one of his friend
occupied in that quarter
of the labyrinthine town.
And, lo, it turned out
the two lassies were
fair game and up for fun,
when, already outside
on the street, the stouter one
declared what beat my wits:
“We are here to meet and fill
demand and municipal needs.”
And I confess—this and my
friend’s amiable and free spirit
troubled my green innocence.
Once we made it to the flat,
there was already a symposium,
a banquet of young hipsters
on its way, discussing
some question of the day
that tried to catch the spirit
of the coming age, so well
embodied in those Gothic gals
bagged from the nether cell
by my merry, good old friend.
But as the time was getting late,
something happened in between
my slowly hatching daimon
whose job is to hold my straps
and me being a clueless outcast,
so I pulled in my horns and left
without waiting for the final act
of which, though, the next day
my friend gave me a rough sketch:
they all shared, and I was missed.
