I realize that calling the series 'nontalia speakers' is kind of silly because it implies that all the other poems are filled with emotions and ideas that correspond exactly to my own. Which isn't true. Maybe I'll just call it the speakers series.
All these poems just prove I have read an awful lot of Kundera. I often think about "The Joke."



Leos Soucek

I wake under feverfew
bound with thick twine. God grant it so!
I have bound it there myself.
So I have stood and waited out the morning
under the moss which hangs
like the heavy brow of Gorky--
Ah, I knew a poet
like him once!
A small man, he stammered
even his own name,
but was fierce and great
when he stood still to listen.
Me--I've seen the great sea move all night,
watched the rain sieve through my roof, and cursed my poverty,
seen my children born, watched the bulls sob in the byre,
and still even the willows speak
better than I do -'the wind plays their hair like a lyre' –
the poet said,
But still God grants I lie all night
down under the yellow eyes of flowers,
down where the moon falls softly on my bed.