Death is always in the background
in this city where graveyards riseto 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.
