A note : David Miller‘s Plasy elegy is a litany based on free association, on sequencing, like images that emerge in one’s mind, similar to a series of photo snapshots transcoded into words. One verse may benefit from some context as, paradoxically, Rudolph Jung and Richard Jung share surnames. Rudolf Jung, born in 1882 in Plasy, was a Sudeten German and Czechoslovak politician, a Nazi, a member of the NSDAP and SS Oberführer. He died by suicide in Prague’s Pankrác prison. Professor Richard Jung, born in 1926 into a Czech-Jewish family in Čáslav, gave a lecture in Plasy in 1998, “What is Reality?” A representative of Parsons-oriented sociology and a philosopher, he died in 2014 in Kutná Hora.

 

Hermit was but wasn't

Plasy elegy

it wasn’t but was a chromatic awakening
it wasn’t but was a minstrel’s banquet and ball
it wasn’t but was a relic of affection and power
it wasn’t but was a proposition for the future
it wasn’t but was a horizon of solitude
it wasn’t but was a snoring bedmate’s fart
it wasn’t but was a political parade
it wasn’t but was a family reunion
it wasn’t but was a community for healing
it wasn’t but was a temple for prayer
it wasn’t but was a carnival of soft wonder
it wasn’t but was a seat at the table
it wasn’t but was a tea ceremony
it wasn’t but was a soda factory
it wasn’t but was for the money
it wasn’t but was the longest day
it wasn’t but was a burning of centuries
it wasn’t but was a mending of wounds
it wasn’t but was a riot of drumming on pots and pans

it wasn’t but was a slow burning candle
it wasn’t but was a child’s merry-go-round
it wasn’t but was an object for debate
it wasn’t but was a pin on a map
it wasn’t but was a drunken tumble
it wasn’t but was a bed for young dreamers
it wasn’t but was a rabbit’s den
it wasn’t but was a voice echoing off the moon
it wasn’t but was a kite catching wind
it wasn’t but was a young maiden’s first true love
it wasn’t but was a lone falcon flying
it wasn’t but was a dog’s paradise
it wasn’t but was a frozen pond
it wasn’t but was a pissoir in the woods
it wasn’t but was an layover for a travelling salesman
it wasn’t but was a question of silence
it wasn’t but was a walk to the store
it wasn’t but was flies tricked into a web
it wasn’t but was a cat crouched low hunting
it wasn’t but was a bag of wheat flour spilled across the granary floor
it wasn’t but was a windowpane’s warm transmission onto cool stone
it wasn’t but was an infected toe that healed
it wasn’t but was long, braided hair gathered up in flowers and green Willow
it wasn’t but was clock tower bells named Rok, Peklo, Raj and Zvěrokruh
it wasn’t but was wild bees feasting on Lipa nectar
it wasn’t but was a house of stacked cards
it wasn’t but was Havel’s promise knocking at the door
it wasn’t but was a mother’s burped breast milk
it wasn’t but was folk singers singing to listeners crying
it wasn’t but was a pot of corn soup
it wasn’t but was a photograph not taken
it wasn’t but was a well of sorrow
it wasn’t but was tongues in cheeks
it wasn’t but was an experimental hypothesis
it wasn’t but was a touch too sensitive for trying
it wasn’t but was a crimson feather
it wasn’t but was a horse’s tail alight
it wasn’t but was mineral springs bubbling up from below
it wasn’t but was a plate of fat pork sausage with a glass of beer
it wasn’t but was the opening to Silent Woods
it wasn’t but was a cardboard suitcase filled with iron
it wasn’t but was ashen hand-wrought nails
it wasn’t but was the centre of the world
it wasn’t but was a tensed wire tuned to a passing crow
it wasn’t but was a blink of the eyes
it wasn’t but was a shout-out for listening
it wasn’t but was a palace for ghosts
it wasn’t but was a school for the ages
it wasn’t but was a time for reckoning
it wasn’t but was a closet of cowls
it wasn’t but was a beginning or end
it wasn’t but was a stork’s roost
it wasn’t but was the anguish of brave soldiers who perished on White Mountain
it wasn’t but was the sound of damp wood underfoot
it wasn’t but was a water walk
it wasn’t but was a friend’s calling
it wasn’t but was a women’s guiding
it wasn’t but was a bowed string buzzing
it wasn’t but was a dancer’s chorus line
it wasn’t but was a smoke-scented flower
it wasn’t but was an empty coal cellar
it wasn’t but was the memory of Richard Jung
it wasn’t but was a visionary’s painting made from yarrow
it wasn’t but was a moth infested woolen cap
it wasn’t but was worms slithering over fragmenting steps
it wasn’t but was a secret told to two
it wasn’t but was the trembling of early autumn leaves
it wasn’t but was all that we spoke for
it wasn’t but was aspic and shared bread
it wasn’t but was a trapeze of bats hanging
it wasn’t but was a hymn to the Beautiful Prince
it wasn’t but was an archive falling.