Take it from the ducks
scrambling for the crusts of bread
we toss into the Vltava River –
this is a place with real hungers.
The people of Prague were still
dismantling sandbags
from the face of their city
twenty years after the
the bombs and tanks
of World War II tore
though her.
There is burned in my memory
the image of my grandfather
falling to his knees
and sweeping off his hat
to bend his head
toward the ground
that received the blood
of the villagers of Lidice
slaughtered by Hitler
just to show the Czech people
what they were in for
as he entered their lands
after Great Britain,
France and Italy gave them
to him at Munich.
(He left two villagers alive
to spread his word.)
I don’t know how many heads
bent in homage to the dead
it takes to heal their
arbitrary murder–
how many years it takes
for the victims of brutality
to come back into the sun
of history.
Yet there is a certain time of day
(a certain time of life)
when the sun strikes the river
in just such a way that its waters
are our perfect reflection
and we forget all sorrow.
It was such a day my grandfather walked me
over the Karlovy Bridge in Prague,
relating the stories sculpted in its statues–
telling me of the ancient competition
between Prague and Istanbul
to become the most beautiful city
in Europe
as both cities rose up under the sun
waiting to shine on a future
when soldiers crossed their
beautiful bridges
only to feed the ducks.