Bob this just gets better, I prefer short lines in poetry but have to admit
that this works well and would not be the same if written any other way. bw
Sally J
>From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Prague In Midsummer (revised)
>Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:12:39 +0000
>
>So, here's what's turned out after a lot of work.
>It's still got long lines - and it's still in 4,5,5 lined stanzas
>(And, Oh, how publishers groan when they see how it's been written!)
>(and any further comments also welcome!)
>
>Prague In Midsummer
>
>I almost cry in the thirty-degree heat below the National Museum
>at the shrine of Jan Palach – his dates and small photograph
>almost obscured by flowers – where tourists pause, smile at camcorders
>and speak American with the bronze Wenceslas statue above them
>
>and behind the baseball caps, the Hawaiian shirts, a steel-wire sculpture,
>taller than the saint, of a young woman’s legs, her panties below her
>knees,
>and beyond pavements, cooler under the shadows of awnings and trees,
>are the crowded street-cafes where tables wobble beneath pizzas and beer,
>the rock music in shops, dark casino doorways, sweating bouncers outside
>bars,
>
>but way above us, through the Museum’s open windows on the top floor,
>there’ll still be hushed people who’ve seen what’s displayed, read the
>signs,
>who now look down on the Square – we don’t see them, they don’t see us
>just the 21st Century the young student died for, such small people moving
>and the long naked legs, the almost lost knickers.
>
>Bob Cooper
>
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