We were in our old house, the two of us.
Paris was burning in hundreds of fires:
ash from a hecatomb of smoldering tires
came drifting over woods and overhead

and through that spring until a farther north.
For Prague would shortly fall, that much I knew.
Soon I would speak my first dissenting words -
soon I would sit unheard in this blind spot

to chant my epic poet. Suddenly
that unfamiliar voice above your book:
‘There's nothing you can do. Just go away.'

The cuckoo clock calls onomatopoeias
and drowns you out. And yet, but still, I name
your name in all the prayers I never say.

Translated by David Colmer