Your city has a hold on me
too, dear Franz. Prague
is still the ‘dear little mother’
you said she was, loving
her ‘sharp claws’ as you did.

Allow me this:
love is never unambiguous.
Prague did not let go of you;
you let go of her. There
were other women in your life.

Felice, to whom you broke
your promise. Twice.
J.W., with whom you had
both kinds of luck.
And Dora...
Last love, not first,
is the great surprise.
She was there
in the end, dear Franz,
but not for you to marry.
You were afraid,
you said,
of domestic life—
insufficient air.
All you had to offer her
was the usual irony.
You did not want a widow-wife.

‘Rage’ was your word
—and ‘rage’ is mine—
for what it was like
being Kafka

in the night.
Looking for the one man
who could judge you,
you found yourself,

dear Franz. Your ‘wound’
opened up, and language
spilled out of you...
like judgment. Like blood.

Your father, dear Franz.
His name is on your stone.
A man who
withheld everything
that was good in him.
You died
before he had time,
but not before
you wrote him a letter
in which you told him
how you felt.
That letter is famous
now—I have read it;
it is called
‘Letter to His Father’—
but you never
delivered it. He never
got it. What you left
behind for him
was a third person,
the ghost of a man
that comes, and comes
again, between
a father and his son.
Can you really blame him?

.   .   .

Your mother, his wife.
Who survived you both.
Kafka men.