Sunday, September 7, 2025

The Old Austro-Hungarian Recipe of How to Turn Humans into Ghosts

 

The so-called “fast train” from Prague
lurched into Ostrov near midnight,
its human freight distilled to a pack
of bloodless, pallid ghosts—

six long hours drained from the capital,
diverted through North Bohemia,
skirting the Doupovské hory,
that obsolete military zone

severing the West from its heart—
though the straight road from Prague
was scarcely sixty miles.

Perhaps that is why no one ever danced,
stepping off that train
and into town.

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