Still Life with Kafka Checking His Watch, Missing
His Train

1. Prague, 7:30 am, 1920

I wanted to start with an image of the sun
As you might have seen it, muted

By a thin sheet of ice on the windows,
The lovers inside spooning each other

On this cold morning, murmuring the harmonies
Inside solitude and honeysuckle and crepuscular

As you stroll down Altstadter Ring,
Past me waiting for the 7:40 train, and when you pass by

I look through you, though I can’t entirely:

It’s still 7:30 and will be for awhile.

You’re still here, but I have to look through you
Because you’d want me to

Stare, instead, as long as I can at that real couple
Making the long walk, arm-in-arm,

Toward St. Vitus Cathedral; you’d want me to listen
For a very long time to their giggling

As they toss coins and miss, completely,
The green sea of the cellist’s case,

At how they’re so wrapped around each other,
And won’t, in this moment, ever let go;

Because they make both of us utterly unaware
Of our own bodies,

Which we can’t figure out. You’d dare
Me, anyone, to show what rapture might mean

Better than you have.

2. La Purisima Mission, Lompoc, California, 2004

Franz, I could tell you the stories I’ve heard
Of couples tossing their veils and boutonnières

Under the highway’s overpass on their way to this mission.

I could tell you they do this so their families
Know they’ll never show up,

Or that they’ll arrive as the same person, or
As the same word:

There was sunshower and honeysuckle, and the two kids
From Lincoln, Nebraska who called themselves

Cornflower after their eyes, which were as blue
As they were silver and wide. But then,

You’d turn to me, wouldn’t you, and ask what’s a good way
To end it? Frightened, I’d lie:

Every day is the right day, and besides,
Who can tell that story with just one word?

And we’d sit, me packing a cigarette,
You checking your watch.

I’m sorry I lied, Franz. Let me tell one last story:
Every day is the right day.

Even if there is no music, just a bunch of wine,

Even as my friend named Frank—really—falls down
In this prolonged pause called a still life

As we make our way out of La Purisima Mission.

We were drunk that day, again, because the wine was free,
A fund-raiser for a woman’s shelter.

I remember wanting my friend’s laughter to rise
Above any reason to laugh, any reason to fall,

Any need for a shelter.

I wanted to join him in his laughter, but
All laughter ends, even in the spirit’s worst

Conditions, like when you can’t name a loss,
So you call it belief or melody, until you feel

Yourself being called back to walk into a California
You see again and again and again,

But will never be able to touch:

My friend face-down in that dust, that rosa dusk
Overhead, all that laughter poured over us

Like sun on the hills of La Purisima, the same sun
That set over Prague hours ago.

I’m sorry I lied.

3. Philadelphia, New Year’s Eve 2005

In Philadelphia, the calendars keep getting thinner.

I want to cry, I’m so happy. Franz, the truth is
My story contains no disaster, even as a new year takes hold.

And I stroll into it with a bottle of ripple, and I count,
In shouts, down to one,

For I’m the only one here.

I throw stones down the tracks.

I press my hand against a grigio dawn,
This buzzing sky I once called home,

Where I’m from, where the calendars keep getting thinner.

I’ll call it home, but what of that? You don’t trust me
Anymore. That’s why you left, isn’t it?

That’s why I want to put you in a poem
That seemingly never ends, and never might,

But should.

I want to make it up to you today, a little.

Home could be a salmon-hued church
With a wooden bell and iron cross,

Or a train station in Prague where I’d hoped to find
You staring at your watch and missing your train

Way back before all this started.

If I found you, would we cry with a laughter
So long and so loud that home could turn

Into a long walk with someone
You’ve just met?

Oh, let’s cry, not because we want to, but because
We can’t figure which train is yours and which is mine.

Let’s get drunk one last time, again, right here,
65th & Island,

May we always miss our trains,
May someone look down upon us

And extend his hands, a cop, perhaps.

May we resume our slow and crooked walk
                                                                toward our respective cells.

Alexander Long