Friday, March 11, 2022

Of the Day when I Met in Prague The Specter of the Havelesque, New And Manifest Little Faustian Eros

 

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.

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