Prague

from New Chapters, Eastern Europe 1990 by John Bennett and John Laidler

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lyrics

An old green pick-up is towing Stalin around
the old city. Excited locals are laughing as
they gingerly kick him in the head on the way.

Despite the enormous moustache casting
a fat shadow on his chin, the modelling
is so wooden I have to ask to be sure.

Someone in the back squeezes bursts of Super 8
catching him bouncing behind, dangerously,
comically, like a puppet out of control.

Hunger strikers are asleep in Wenceslas Square,
a man eats a lemon, the young couple shout at passers-by
‘If you don't vote, you vote for communism’.

The woman at Tourist Information laughs at me,
she’s had no enquiries for the Lenin Museum
in such a long time. She thinks it’s closed.

An evangelical north-American wants to know
if the tiny house in Golden Lane was Kafka’s
place of birth or death. Her repertoire fails again.

She apologises for being born into a utopia
ridiculously Kafkaesque, one that assassinated
such information until a few months ago.

On tourist duty, I visit the puppet theatre, jazz clubs
and a Jewish graveyard - stones gnaw silence
at all angles from horizontal death to everlasting life.

The city lacked neon, tourists or a vibrant night life, but
vibrated with hope, an election! The poet Václav Havel
became president. The Communists did better than expected.