Child of Prague (In memory of Franz Kafka)

Born before your own country

Gifted child of Prague,

Son of an animal butcher

You got little chance to brag

Of vision or hunger or trial

Or escape from semi-dead,

Confined and often tortured

By the strictures in your head.

Peter Parler’s Bohemian bridge

You ambled across by glow of moon

Fragments of thoughts and images

Of jackdaw, love and lagoon.

You saw what mortals seldom see

Rejection and ultimate loss

And Gregor matched your solemn step

Crushing apple and cross.

Almost always lost in thought

Spectral visions manifest in words,

Not so simple, simple things

Suspended on trapeze of raven birds

Whose cacophony clapped hands on ears

The sounds you couldn't drown out,

Like the soundings of a rejecting father,

Powerful presence, negative clout.

Your head was full, your golden gullet

With blockage no country doctor could cure,

Penal colony of body and soul,

Mouse chorus under the floor.

The Lord of Lords intervened

And took you into His care,

Death cures all ills of body and mind,

Metamorphosis; foul dust to fresh air.

Sketch by Barry-John after Helena Vlcnovska.