The Stones

It is the air that holds you down
In this senselessly beloved town,
While piercing frost deep ‘neath our bones…
Beware of how you touch the stones
Who pave the street; enslave your feet;
Entrance the lost who pass above them,
Till you over-glorify and love them,
Till every tourist we once hated
Is un resented, unseen, faded.
The walls, the shadows, crooked, near,
Slowly cloud and disappear.
So we wander. So we crawl.
There is nothing left at all
But out living cobblestones.
Whispering. Freezing. Mid the moans.
This chill is even unfelt – old.
No escape now from this cold
Quiet, heartless, numbing, slow
But to fly away. To go

- Written by Anna Williams at age 17
in Prague, Czechoslovakia