Prague

Death is always in the background

in this city where graveyards rise

to meet a low sky scarred with steeples
and towers, the past is a castle high on hill

to get there, we pass sighing over sluggish
water watched by death’s statues and sadness -

here and then gone, like my younger self
visiting a city that no longer exists,

like us, briefly in that old hotel
on Wenceslas Square, before the something

that held us died – yes, death’s here like the rain
dotting the river with her little black dots.