POETRY

Utopenec

By Elizabeth Onusko

Jan Palach

I'm taking it all with me - the metallic sighs,
the light that decides to        itself after such
displays of rain, the puddle I once saw
in the             of Vsetaty, and how, as I approached,
my body locked -         a physical kind of
thinking, for what seemed a shallow         of water
might go a dozen          down, (it was possible,
I had heard of                  ), but still I stepped,
expecting bottom
                   a bloom of bubbles trailed
from a                 mouth         I worsted
                       so this is
    the surface
                                  receded until

This poem comes from a longer work about the Czechoslovakian college student Jan Palach and the Prague Spring.