At this hour, in late March, in the year 1945, all that could be heard from the cellar bars and illicit taprooms was an incomprehensible mix of half-drunken tongues struggling to keep up with the tuneless wail of violins and cracked drums.

The door always used to swing shut, by itself, for years and years, with measured haste. / Now it stands utterly still.

Days that she’d taken for lost, days when she’d felt like air that was slightly thicker and English-speaking, it must have been then that someone had been watching her the whole time, following her, dazzled by her existence, going crazy over her and . . .

Petr Borkovec is now a somewhat neglected author, and it is unquestionably true that only a small handful of readers know his work.

It was as if she were in the pages of some story where dwarfs, magicians, and fairies suddenly materialize and the simple, concrete houses turn into marzipan and chocolate. The queen beheld with pleasure Gina’s puzzled attitude, walked around her, sweeping the accumulated dust on the floor with her skirt.

You’d just be silent and gaze at the gold. As you try to master your inner turmoil and mature in front of the opulent rows of your favorite brand, your tongue struggles with the mass of orange gum.

Tomorrow morning he’s leaving. There’s no way back. I’ve tried to talk him out of it. But he’s determined to go. Again. And he knows I can’t understand why he does it.

in the auditorium of several neighboring windows / I see a single moth / as old and miserable as the world

I’m interested to know how I’ll feel then when I drive with a girl in a convertible past soldiers driving on the other side of the road, knowing that they are going to war. Disgust with them or with myself? With them or myself?