Zdena Heller

And Then Again . . .

1941

Pushing me a little she said,
You are too big to sit on my lap,
my child.

That was the summer
my sister was born.

1981

The customs door releases a small
woman my eyes don’t recognize
but my heart throws itself

at the bars of its cage and that’s how —
after thirty years of separation —
I know my mother.

Every night after dinner she
invites me to sit on her lap
to watch a TV program she

cannot understand. I sit sprawled
on top of her until I cannot bear it:
I'm too heavy for you Mother.

No, no, she protests from the depth
of the armchair, stay where you are
my child.

Wild Geese

Mother flew back to Prague last night.

I lie in her unchanged bed
facing the empty square
of grey February sky
when harsh cries explode
above the roof — wild geese!

I follow their circling sound
until they land under my window
and settle into a contented cackle;
I know they are nibbling
on the sparse winter grass.

I pull the sheet over my face,
inhale my mother's scent
and remember her
saying, Wild geese will bring
luck to your house.

Alone in the Morning

Without mother in the kitchen
the morning is metal — gray and heavy.

I sit in my high chair staring
in the ice-cold mirror, watchful

for the pale vaporous ones
who pounce on you from behind.

They crouch in empty corners
with huge open mouths yawning

the unknown, their mournful eyes
watch and watch and follow. I must not

look away. Won't someone rip open
the featherbeds of the sky,

let the down drift softly —
bury me — hide me? I must not

breathe. Even a single feather
rising would give me away.

A Morning in Prague: March 1939

Early in the morning a child
holding a jar of yogurt stands
on the curb in her city.

Wet snow is falling. The jar
is wet and cold, too big for her hand.

All round her people press to watch
slowly advancing unbroken stream: ash-green
cars, trucks, soldiers, soldiers —

On the sidewalk all, even the policemen
in their silver-trimmed uniforms,
weep silently.

Soldiers in open trucks sway —
this way and that —
the rifles propped between their knees
aim at the sky.

People watch the soldiers,
the soldiers stare at the people,
their eyes don’t meet.

Motors rumble on and
from the threatened skies
wet snow keeps falling.

Among the shards on the curb: a small
white mound, red strawberries.


Prague

This little mother has claws.

— Franz Kafka