POEM: ‘Prague by Night’
Patchouli oil and the scent of your travel hair,
our smaller days middle-aged and measured
by hotel soaps that come in gold foil
wrappers like they’re something special.
You say one European city is like another.
Scientists say somewhere in space
exist colors we’ve never seen.
When we make love in the hotel room
in Prague, I close my eyes
and try to think about you instead of
those colors and if we’ll see them
like some kind of reward when we die.
Yesterday we went to Kafka’s house.
He died of starvation in a hospital before
intravenous feeding was invented,
not in a concentration camp or ghetto
like his sisters Ottla, Elli, and Valli.
At the breakfast buffet today
I took extra bread and cheese
to make sandwiches for lunch.
I wasn’t hungry and slipping
them in a plastic bag felt like stealing.
I surprised myself with petty satisfaction.
I thought about Kafka and his sisters
as we ate the sandwiches sitting on the steps
of St. Giles Church. Inside, baroque gold angels
bored with God, cavort half-nude in gilded heavens
where they hoard their gold and ignore us.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.