All the way from Prague, my youngest daughter Anne Marie spreads the Poem Elf spirit. As you can see, she loves her adopted city; as you can’t see and wouldn’t know, she also loves the word “romantic.” (See her commentary.) We have a running family joke about an awkward card she gave me as years ago in which she wrote about our “fun romantic times together.” (She thought romantic referred to affection and snuggling.) Her understanding of the word has since righted itself, but her chosen street and poem remind me of her open heart, how much I miss her, away now for so long.
Anne Marie notes that František Halas is a Czech poet from a working class family (1901-1949). Short life. I hope he got the love he dreamed of.
Confession
by František Halas
Touched by all that love is
I draw closer toward you
Saddened by all that love is
I run from you
Surprised by all that love is
I remain alert in stillness
Hurt by all that love is
I yearn for tenderness
Defeated by all that love is
at the truthful mouth of the night
Forsaken by all that love is
I will grow toward you.
This is one of my favorite streets in Prague—it’s romantic and exciting and I can’t wait to show it to everyone I love at some point in my life. I always see couples sitting here, so I picked a love poem by a Czech poet. I can’t choose which line grabs me the most because it all rings true in a simple, retrospective way. “Surprised by all that love is I remain alert in stillness” is where I stand now, wondering who it is I’ll bring here.
For anyone on Instagram who needs a break from the gloom-and-doom of Covid-19 news,
But 
I left the poem in a bush at the University of Michigan’s peony garden. The peonies were just past peak, spent, slightly deflated, lovers on wrinkled sheets. (Yes, I am trying to make you cringe.)
Poet Elizabeth Garber grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio in a glass house designed by her father, a well-regarded architect who was mentally ill. She wrote a memoir, Implosion, about that time in her life. She’s also published three books of poetry. For thirty years she’s been a practicing acupuncturist in a small coastal town in Maine where she lives with her family.
But they couldn’t hold back on their wedding day, the glow, the big smiles, the “reflected joy” in the mirror of their eyes, the affectionate touching whenever the other was near. This overflowing of love from a couple who have known each other since their teenage years was a living, breathing exhibition of Cavafy’s words.
Constantine Petrou Cavafy is Greece’s most highly esteemed modern poet even though he lived only briefly in Greece. He was born in 1863 in Egypt to Greek parents, the youngest of nine children. After the death of his father, the family fell into poverty and moved to England. There he spent most of his childhood. More financial distress pulled the family to Greece, then back to Egypt, where Cavafy worked as a journalist and as a stockbroker. But the bulk of his professional life was spent at a government agency.
