I LIVE IN PRAGUE

Translated by Stephan Delbos and Filip Šenk

I live in Prague

and maybe I’m rooted here
after five years

and I leer at the young
girls at the next table

joyful and independent

who play at life, that it’s true

and what was

they know only from the
memories of elders

but not everything

and to see more colorfully

I got a glass of old port

from a Dutchman from
Rotterdam

who serves in this vinohrady
pub

and perhaps that is why

I revealed to him in Dutch

that I lived ten years in
his district

and could at least strip the
nakedness of the past in front of him

now I want to think of a real city

of Prague

but it doesn’t work

Everything is on a wave
again

because the fresh gentry

still aren’t glutted

and no one knows where they
stop

and what of the city will be
made new

and what of the old will be
left

if the city will still want
me then

or if it is me who will
refuse