Blue fireworks cascade from the overhead line

as a tram turns sharply

into another crowded street,

silk stockings and headache-bands

catch the sun.

The old murmuring of string band waltzes

has a wooden sandy edge so now

we charleston closer to the gramophone horn

to reassure ourselves of its always distant call.
We are floating on the spoils of a lost empire.
Vienna?

Berlin rather,

with UFA and Pabst

but we may at last be here, in our Czechoslovakia,

where ideas flower along the electric vine

as we wait in cafes for that new wine

we are assured will come in those new bottles.