Sitting in a Starbucks cafe in the middle of Prague, just by the Charles bridge, the one with all the statues, I am almost a bit baffled by the complete mix of history and culture in this city. As you can see in the picture below, I am standing in front of an old building with its art nouveau front, and in the same building there is a Mango fashion store. It is almost Kafkaesque...
I also found this poet, Louis Armand, an aussie living and teaching here in Prague. Although I have not, as the poem describes, travelled by the Nighttrain, but maybe some day I will.
NIGHTTRAIN
the allegory is ended where the window
across from you—opening
to the left & right
like a hollow stage—phantom
fleeing ... but the day after tomorrow
there is also time
which can be banished
of every one of those senses—the un-
charted space of
enactment foreshortened to memory
the distant pitch of factory sirens'
tedious iteration—brooding
over the strange absence between—
when you find yourself anonymous
as any other passenger (the ticket in your hand
no longer proof of destination) ...
nearer they came: it's impossible to know
the degree of solitude you’ll reach
once fate touches you ... & the wind
pushing behind the glass
almost visible—frightened by its
humanness (a moment later the light outside
has faded against the roof-line)—
was it death that was between us then?
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