Dedicated to my mom, Cathy, and my dad, Jim,
who carried me when I lost my footing
and believed in me no matter what

Poems written by Hillary Frasier Hays
through the quill of Tobiáš Dvořák
for the women who carried him
1828–1883

* * *

Prague Dawn

I wept that maddened, dismal dawn in Prague,
where morning’s dreary sun had not yet stung
my first worst stroke of sorry fright— 
where misery of human sprawl seemed,
for just an instant, to recall and right itself. 

What wee and weighted souls as these,
imbued, one mottled wish, perceived:
These fraught and furtive days would not, for all, 
blemish unforsaken, where brisker breads
and cleaner cloths could yet efface all poverties.

That mortars’ nostrums, coarsely ground, 
when guzzled, would not drown our tongues
in bitterness. If sharpened blades which callous,
sever veins of countless gentle creatures
ever cared to bleed them dry less cruelly.

When well-worn shoes, improved
by careful mendings, shall trust our frostbit feet
are in need of warming. That taverns, drowning drunks
in drink to rot the human mind of promise
would spare some sober mercies.

That charneled church bells which portend
some nobler purpose would not, for all, fall silent.
And elder gents who hum a hand-cranked
hurdy-gurdy tune, in hopes of kindly coins,
would smile with eyes conceding wrinkles. 

That newer priests, poised to lessen livid palls
of parishioners should pause to part with lavish coins
there. Where roosters, culled, declared this day,
as if they called its dawning to ensue, had yet
the throats to squawk and croon here.

That horses’ clopping hooves should steady
rhythm’s urgent, fervent cues. That bearings’ clattered
wheels, foretelled to fall, could refrain from failing. 
Where noisy vendors hawking wares, and cobble cleaners’
nostrils flare, still dared bother to awaken. 

There, a nearby girl does wail, too young
for childbirth’s furor. Where no one cares to comfort her
through throes of heavy labor. And a doctor, late
to pay his gambling debt, should choose to pass by,
and ignore her.

That all of this might matter anything at all
was never more than now in question.
And shall we carry, hapless, on—
or shunt ourselves to Death’s surrender?

For Markéta

You swathed my split and bleeding hand,
and did not ask from whence I chanced.
The shawl wrest from your shoulder, fast,
trussed taut to slow the flow
of what your husband, drunk, had cleft,
and left to hang.

As when his startled skull cracked cobblestone,
we fled. And how I came unto your aid
when patricide thought best to pass you by.
Your meager rooms became my home.
The ways you sutured nights to days,
with needles primed, a steadied gaze,
for words were luxuries much better saved
for broth and fuel and fools who care to hope.

You bought me paper though,
when my halved hand once more
did dare a quill. You did not call this love.
You called it what we do.
Mending other people’s clothes—
your fingers spooling back the slack,
while I hauled coal and bartered seams
and thewed my brawn for bread and meat.
You sewed our secrets into drawers,
a chore to keep them hidden well.

I look for you, Markéta, still—
in every room, the corners call me first.
Whence seeking was the love,
and stitching was the hug, and staying was the debt.
Until consumption culled your cough.
A pauper’s grave and shepherd’s purse there gently lain
afforded tender rest enough.

For Dorota

The candle does not know it risks dying—
asking only to grant the giving of sight,
to linger in lighting, loosed in translation
from waxing to warming, the wick is succumbing—
a sacrifice shaped as trivets befriend;
its last drip descends in tender surrender.
For seven years, I lived you, Dorota:
Václav’s widow, savior, tutor, our true and gentle life.

The tallow shall only pretend that it glows,
on and forever—though whether the prize
is but one hour longer to read past the din,
or a cherished prayer, hushed in devotion,
before nods and yawns interrupt, and result
in our parting—may the words never change,
may our words yet remain, not weeping
too long when informed of their waning.

How the night thrush waits hushed
on a low, barer branch for the last hissing kettle
to sing, and petals of linden lilt through thick steam
to sweeten your vigils of tea. From Václav’s chair,
my voice is your vesper, your eyelids aflutter to hear—
poets, philosophers, languages loved.
Whence pages grown weary of turning, declare
they are eager to grace libraries in dreams.

You taught me this: that from books, we glean
more than tepid instruction; they are rather
a reader’s dear friends. And a companion
who stays when the road whispers come,
and you’d let him go, is a treasure all of its own.
For that shivering man in the back of the chapel,
who had not eaten in days, whose soul
you warmed as a flickering candle,
and patiently hastened to tend.

For Margarethe

When ascending the stair to your regal townhouse,
to your mind of precisions no linguist dared parse,
declensions exacting, tenses supreme,
glints of disapprovals correcting a phrase.
Your formidable height and brow raised to eye,
your chin held erect with scrutiny’s stride—
I felt as a smudge on your marble-wrought floor.

O Vienna—city of vain and strictest codes,
whence dares arrive this fled stable boy:
a poet, rose-draped, through a daguerreotype lens.
A companion unworthy to scholarly kin.
A speaker of Latin too unschooled to banter,
a lover of literature not taught to be critical—

Still, you took on his less graceful mind.
And I, who’d wrought poems with sticks in the stalls,
a boy for whom hiding in cupboards was fraught,
whose mother taught letters in a worn book of verse
between father’s beatings and her mending of shirts,
should I pass for wise, or be equal at all,
I thought an imposter, stupid, and small.
But you chose to sculpt me, chiseled and groomed.

Many, the ornaments sages choose to bedeck,
though decor without truth is the emptiest premise.
Your love of a woman, veracious and tender,
the letters you hid, the scandal that sundered,
was a secret that customs insisted you kept.
You’d told me of Anna, the one time you’d wept.
I said: “Love is love.” Our bond was then deepened.

Had I gone to Paris when blackmail sought smear,
I’m sure we’d have persisted, our friendship as dear,
I imagined the Seine and salons would much please.
My life there, one destined, a hoped-for reprieve.
But Thumb said: To Linz. Learn there how to make.
We embraced—our first and our last touch of grace.
Margarethe, I greatly lamented your loss.

For Greta

With forty-seven moving parts,
a linden thumb befit my joint without. 
You wrought it well, each switch
and spring, for every waiting poem
I would promise to be writ. 
Each gear and strap, the work
by which you tempered, lone,
exacting crafts, a secret asked,
the marriage carriage did collapse,
your freedom won—and then,
our drunken blundered shame
of bodies briefly mingled, which,
when fraught, forgot to seek
their separate benches.
You said: Now write. 
And thus, my letters leaned
no more askew, and words
stood upright on each plotted page.
As so, Greta, I have carried you
throughout my every phrase—
the maker in the making.
The widow’s chosen isolation.
At the border of your country
I was the only latch left open. 
That my presence was a comfort,
though at the end, unsettling.
A flesh-formed timepiece tooled
and ticking. The way
long-stoppered hearts resist
resetting, precisions scaled
and staked in missing time.

For Liesl

I see you, still, a fabled painter in the Englischer—
your easel mused by oil and speckled light.
Though hesitant to meet my gaze,
I sensed in you such swaths of blooms
too trampled, teemed, to trod on brusque,
or nestle, gracious, in-between. I stayed.
Whereafter months of thirst, at worst,
less saturated hues and timid glances glazed,
your hunger for my form, at last, became.
Pastel gifts and painted lips succumbed, in droves.
Desire did then color all our days.
How modeled figures once portrayed
in clay and grays acquainted rose and indigo,
and softer goldens so, when paled in sleep,
our bodies having learned
what they were for.

The northern sun, it graced us,
every lazy glow and gleam.
Eight years, our ardent atelier—sacred, whole,
where bread and wine, sweet turpentine suffused,
and paintings breathed as immured birds
burst free to summer’s dreaming dusk.
The songs we scored, our love chords
not a symphony, but rather, harmonies
of less tuned keys and crafted verse.
The ecstasies of I am here. And want to be.

Yet still, you went.
A boy, in need of mothering.
His father, who once stole
your pieces as his own, then swore to full restore
your signature. The price was me.
That door I carried your bags through,
our tears held in, the hinge that cringed
our final glistened kiss.

I helped you leave.
If only I had asked if you also wanted me.
Though the carrying was the love,
and the leaving was the wound,
and both of these I held as true
when then I turned to die a while
inside our now too heavy,
hollowed room.

For Marta

What first I spied: your shock of fiery, fraying hair,
a crimp of careless, wilder locks which, scoffing plaits,
escaped and sheared their knotted braids by half.
And then, a constellation of infection, pitted past,
your scars, such beauty ravaged and dismantled.
A limping leg yet stunted, scourged you
as an outcast.

You knelt by yarrow there, your cottage sparse of thatch,
a sheepshed keening toward collapse,
to tether motherwort which crept, a punishment of weeds, consumed, their roots so deep in beds, the pulling
made your fingers bleed, as if for vengeance at the earth,
curses terse, your gritted jaw, the dirt fought back,
and, holding fast, its fetid food—your children’s bones, now bared of flesh, though fitted still in pretty clothes,
a lingered feast for nosing molds,
a second, mottled home to worms.

Jakob and Thérèse, tempted by that placid mirror,
found tangled hand-in-hand, downstream, its little river,
crystal, like an angel’s bath, glimmering in sweetened dew,
as if a kindly speckled breast had beckoned,
and then guided you to wade:
Collect my pretty quartz to make
a crown. Worry not to drown.
Your mother must recall
her forsook beauty
still believes.

Jakob and Thérèse, you counted ten of each,
the rose and clearest quartz, worn soft,
such gumdrops sprinkled, Heaven’s sugar frothed,
in eddies, like some tickles offered
to reward your earnest quest.
Pockets gladly stuffed.

When first was it, dear Marta, that you called
them in, your twins, and set their plates,
how grave your grief that lessened not,
but like an acid, ate away your weary, fragile peace.
To beat me on my chest, to beg the child
who would replace, to ravage bloom and herb and root,
to upturn fruit, to stab a sleeping sheep
unto its bloodied doom, whence then
you sought protection from a phantom threat
spent only in your splintered mind.

There was, by then, no laudanum
nor valerian robust enough to clot the breach.
The asylum would have you, yes, but angel’s pool
would offer better rest. Where currents once
were loathed by you, small mercies at your end.
A broken woman’s weight much less than flotsam’s guile,
its hushing kiss defends.

I carried what I could for you, my anguished friend.
I could not bear enough.
Your raging braids afire yet, your sinking skin
of weeping blue, a sunrise wet and sparked
upon that whispered, haunted flume, a rutted face
beknownst to God did seek a shimmered sluice of sky,
where wounds acquaint, embrace, and tender, meet
their gutted, wept, bereft goodbyes.

For Zarya

I, it was, that twilit eve, the road ensouled,
with ghosts for eyes, my linden thumb affixed
the compass guide, it soon to point the next right sign,
the surest path past portent’s pending pall.
These seven years I passed, attending to an undone soul,
who wept, and raged, and lost her mind in spades.
Her frantic torments, digging in, no bell
to spare the burying, a sparking tinderbox,
her sorrow’s splinters wedged beneath
my sparer thumb. My tourniquet of tears withheld.
Her grief left raw and unrepaired. Indeed,
I scarcely dared to hope to find a kinder home.

But then, your painted vardos, rolling, spellbound, in,
their timbers: lustrous swaths of crimson lacquer-bright,
with lines of amber pinstripe sharply picked,
a gilded lion, carved, his golden mane aglow,
acanthus vines that twined in scrolling flight,
a nightingale beheld her verdant mate, a spiral spate,
awash of roses drinking pewter rain.

“What use is dread when wonder casts aside all drear,”
I said. My ears did pleasure melodies, the fiddle’s frenzy,
the squeezing box’s squeeze, as I, aghast,
at flashing fire swords, an acrobat bent back in half,
one-handed flipped, a pony tip-hooved, danced,
macaques in jester’s garb who drummed and pranked,
a skirted poodle toed a jig, as two lithe children spun
and leaped—like puppets mimicking their dolls,
clacking Harlequins in tiny, magicked hands,
as wire, wood, and living blurred and yipped.

Then emerged the cloaked Romani augur
from her tent, an oracle made flesh, eyeing skittishness,
fire-iced, arresting in intent—while on her shoulder
stood Garado, a sleek-winged raven, a-cluck like silver
coins, a noble shade against her velvet robe.
Onlookers were unsure, I sensed, if they should gasp,
or clap, or scorn, or flee to cottages confined,
drawing ragged, burlap blinds
to ward off luring deviltries.

How then you bid me closer, Zarya.
Spirits speaking, eager, the threshold’s tellings
tingled, and that you, crescent-traced, then listened
at my palm, and espied my road unfold, entire—
the mouse boy in his cupboard, hiding,
my battered mother, bruised and crying,
the brutal father I did slay, his gut
that met the shaving blade, my fire set, 
without regret, the horse that fled, the thumb
hacked off, the six I’d loved before your candent light,
the four who died, the others, left,
the tortures of a man torn between
his forward march, or the restive grace
of staying’s cost.

Yet you were not afraid. Rather, claimed my aims
a sacred journey. When seeing god in every woman,
their deities of wisdoms sculpted, each lesson, supple.
Though certain shaper’s hands were stiff and sewn,
others folded and devoted. Some were prodding,
firm and cool, or those that tinkered, tersely screwed,
or then, meandered, soft as plying foam,
where others clawed and punctured,
and could not be consoled.

Then you—enthralling, polished seeing orbs.
Five years beside you at that kindled, living fire.
Tarot aligned, the spiraled smoke, each signal
soon translated, our rituals to thank the lost and left,
the sundry fortunes read, your maps, hand-drawn,
and veils to other worlds, so parted.

I mended wheels when bolts were breaking.
For careless scrapes and nettles stinging,
I mixed sweet balms and medicines,
and kindly entertained the children.
I even settled small suspicions when at borders,
and saved the smallest boy from falling—
and so your trustless brother came to call me friend.

How then, we were a family.
I, the wandered stranger, now belonging.
And all that while, you sang me stories of the stars,
and apparitions who’d known no rest would pause
their thankless traipse, and ask to sit a while among,
until the light in wait felt bright enough
to risk their gift of restless song.

Zarya, my soul-sooth, pulsing sight,
a hawthorn hedge did bloom for you,
a thirsted bud consumed my wincing heart.
I bore my longing as a thorn-bled thumb,
leading nowhere you would come.
To the spirits you were wed.
You taught me this, beloved, though:
That wanting what you cannot hold
is still a kind of holding.

For Isabella

You saw me, my friend: not as a tattered boy
who wore and hid a secret too terrible to mend,
or a sodden shiv drawn in that dark
where his cleft thumb was then cautered.
Or a boy whose soul would have need of a needle
and thread—to be patched betwixt seams of a life
stitched too taut for laughter, spared—or, more
generous grief. And, when holding her hand
at the end, how she finally breathed.

You saw me, my friend: not as a vagrant in a chapel pew,
half invisible, shivering, my greatcoat damp
from hard rain, where filthied by mud ditch,
the first dream of Thumb said: Go where she waits
for no one. Become ye, a student of Latin,
devotion embodied, a candle outlasting her glow,
be the good son that she and Václav so wanted,
a bright kettle, a well-loved book,
a warming presence in the home.

You saw me, my friend: not as a copyist
in a floor-to-sky library, or an untrained brain to refine.
Not as one tasked to conceal that great works
had been wrought by a woman’s sharp mind,
or the keeper of a secret named Anna
that would crash the whole edifice down.
I learned there to think, to dispute, to declare,
to monitor threats unawares, a stipend as well,
but just one embrace in five years.

You saw me, my friend: not as a set of hands
at a workbench, or an intricacy of gears to be wound,
or a thumb joint needing an augment, a man
where men shouldn’t stand. I learned her, inventor,
the tools of the testament to do—
not too closely—the act of making me whole,
her sole sanctity. Be wary of whiskey, though, widows
who covet sobriety. Her chagrin,
vast enough to dismiss me.

You saw me, my friend: not as hunger sees body,
nor as rapture craves arousal of flesh. Not as the breath
of my life nor the light of my lust nor the last wine
spilled in the feather-filled bed—nor the unbearable
agonies of agreeing to part. Through her, I learned colors
at the starts and the ends of all things.
Was it love, or my shadow caught in the throat of her skin?
Breathing, though too mute to inquire
the whole of her tremulous wanting.

You saw me, my friend: not as a spade knelt in dirt
who would trade his labor for uneasy looks,
then to witness the madness devour her
as soil sucks at roots. Not as a keeper of sorrows,
the knower of losses, and rose quartzes
kept in overfilled jars. Or the pockets of children
who drowned seeking gems for a motherly crown.
A woman whose grief made an uproot of gardens,
a murder of sheep. My arms were too weak
to carry her pain.

You saw me, my friend: Not as the one with ghosts
in his eyes or a palm of strong lines to portent the scry.
Not as the embodiment of roads traversed, or the sieve
through which Spirit sent Thumb as my guide.
For her I would carry the collect of craving,
what resists being weighted and held.
Though she was the seer of dreaming made starlight,
where you were the masks
in the mirror made real.

You saw me, my friend: and the seeing was good,
with the sconces alit, and the audience roared,
and the show was complete. The inexorable truth
that we each are a repertoire of parts.
That roles donned to speak, or to secret our hearts,
shall exorcise loss. As though worn all our lives,
we’ll distinguish which masks are best
set aside at the end of the play. And that you, who smiled,
as this aged man gazed from a seated parquet

beholding your stage, would adore my particular way
of inhabiting space, and thus call me up
to share in your own. To defend me when judged,
and well after my death, a convent sustained,
the scribe and the child, long graced by your aid.
When the Thumb said: You’re home,
and this love was your goal.
Isabella, you’ve carried
our story to tell.

For Anežka

Then came my dying. The quietest thing I’ve ever done.
Or was it then that moment my breath first caught
and hung, when you, the newest nun, first trundled
your young way through that dank, decrepit hall of cells,
of bars that held young men who had wrought wrongs
of many wicked hues and ill-sung storied songs,
would clatter tin and catcall long, begging
some attention, or blind redemption to unlock. 

Beloved, in another time, their faces
might have been my own. 
If would the stable owner not have known,
nor cared the boy must bring to end
his father’s brutish rage, nor granted loan of horse
to save the mother other bruises, nor consented
that it best to reap the elder Dragoun razed.
Without a spoken turn of phrase, but just an eye
and nod which meant: “Boy, with blessings.
Take the horse when you are done
with what you must.” 

Thus I fled to Běla, in her stead
and long-earned trust, and nuzzle oft received,
I relied upon her steady legs, as fast
as winged creatures asked to keep
to land could hope to fly.
She, with awful cottage flames reflected in her eyes,
a neigh impatient, ne’er to pause for rest,
was tasked with keeping me a free boy, then.

But did she also time her steps
lest I should find myself confined
those fifty-two years hence, in that squalid cell,
wherein a Sister much too young for older eyes,
should want to sit beside, and make a way
for me to be remanded to a convent bed,
and nurse me back unto my health,
and serve as scribe to all my life.
To love the boy who cupboard-hid,
and too, the one who breached his father’s gut,
and too, the man who would companion
eight before her, in all the myriad of ways
a man can honor, stay, fail to repay, or disappoint,
though not betray—and there to stave
temptation, when she took to rest in my thin cot,
averring she belonged not to the god of men,
but unto the rule of her own choosing.
And there, beheld my story, and then,
begot our child, and set on such a parchment primed,
a love that would so long outlast us both.

My dear Anežka. I behold you
as my breath bids: “It is time now, soul.”
Our daughter, drowsy, through the wall,
stirs upon her back as if to sense
some father in the house
is passing on.

My satchel, full, upon the floor, 
has held and heaved the long road’s heart. 
Accrued, its relics are the ledger
of all the wants I never asked nor voiced.
I lost my path. You found my map.
Now take this quill, my love. 
Plot the atlas of the asked.
Write the rest.