Where Kafka Stopped Writing

   by David Chorlton

In the presence of company a man
once told somebody about my home.
He was not a compatriot, and didn’t know
that I came from there, he talked
only because there he once
gave a speech on the subject of land erosion.
My country crumbled on his tongue.
I insisted that he stop, that he leave me
enough of the place to return to
but he ignored me until all that remained
was the final crumb
which he spat out just before he took
a last drink of the ocean
he had been swirling in the glass in his hands.

I looked out of the window, tired, sitting up.
At the corner by the church
an acquaintance turned, a merchant,
an old man with a long thin beard.
He noticed me, was apparently pleased
to see me and called out asking whether I wanted
to go with him,
back into the past. His eyes filled
with tears as he described
everything we would find there.
It would be exactly as we left it, he said,
a lost world regained, and all it would take
for me to find it again
was that I get up and dress,
open the door and take my first step.
The rest would be easy,
we needed only to walk side by side.
But I had no shoes for such a journey,
only the pillow
on which I placed my head,
the cotton cover filled with dreams and feathers.