Trained dogs jump through the sun’s flaming ring
through my thoughts
Baroque legionaries lounge tedious on Charles Bridge
and water under the weir
sweats mouth foaming it runs
and flows
returns
like green grain in the wind
Water returns
returns as heartache flung into the world like a boomerang
But last night’s dream won’t return to me
and I’ll never hear the Internationale again
the way it sounded at the burial
of the poet who transposed each line
into its unusual tones
It’ll all repeat
summer and winter
the crying pigeons
and lovers’ woes
it’ll all return like echoes like Roman bells like our lives
That dream of mine won’t
the Internationale on a poet’s grave
What will return
life water under the weir
~Václav Hrabě, from ‘A Short Poem About Prague’ (1990), translated by C. E. Janacek
photo: 36.737178, -91.218298: thanksgiving 2007 along the ridiculously great eleven point river, a super-hot blaze, playing with timed-exposures, a forceful popping and chaotic release of moisture droplets embedded within the burning chunks of wood creating trails of light, doing my best to join the action, jumping through the frame with a headlamp aimed back at the camera, simple things can occupy a simple mind for hours, trust me