Travel

Travel


In other places other words
name claws, mother, transport.
Or is it that language transforms?
Prague’s painted houses in Golden Lane
look like dolls’ houses or stage sets.
Spectators jammed the square
when the occupants were pulled out--


Should we put a period to things?
At least the hours chime the same
in every tongue, at least the astronaut flies
as high above every continent of the world.
There she is in that shining capsule
as we glance up with envy.
Don’t keep asking me what I think.


We could pull her from space
as if from drowning though she might
prefer to be transported.
And anyway what would it prove?
Primeval forests crowd the hills
above these medieval towns.
Last night I dreamed I was in Prague—


Kafka’s “mother with claws”--
and I woke to find myself here,
the castle looming over me,
old city across Charles Bridge,
“Robert the Devil” playing
in the opera house and, at
the Kafka Center, for heaven’s sake,
the lunge of Piazzolla’s tangos.


Copyright © Mary Crow
—first published in Field
Oberlin College Press

—reprinted in The High Cost of Living
Pudding House Press, 2002
Posted over on Mary Crow's Blog