We were in our old house, the two of us.
Paris was burning in hundreds of fires:
ash from a hecatomb of smoldering tires
came drifting over woods and overhead
and through that spring until a farther north.
For Prague would shortly fall, that much I knew.
Soon I would speak my first dissenting words -
soon I would sit unheard in this blind spot
to chant my epic poet. Suddenly
that unfamiliar voice above your book:
‘There's nothing you can do. Just go away.'
The cuckoo clock calls onomatopoeias
and drowns you out. And yet, but still, I name
your name in all the prayers I never say.
Translated by David Colmer
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem