Masarykovo Nadraji
5am sanctuary
from mirrored,
rain sodden streets.
Weather beaten
from outdoor beds
we dry by the door.
Watching the passing
stream train men,
cigarettes on their lips.
Poised,
we pounce
on discarded waste,
and smoke.
Smug,
grinning into Turkish coffee,
thick as the furrows
on the workers brows.
Bitter as the news.
We slide into warm seats.
Pecking at half empty plates.
Parasites on the backs
of days in industrial toil.
Choosing instead a famished liberty
over songs of slavery.
‘Monday morning,
Monday moaning.
Monday morning,
Monday moaning.
Monday morning,
Monday moaning.
Always working,
always moaning.’
In haste
their waste
is fuel for our fires.
There is revolution in potato salad,
inevitable change in Rholiky*.
An abandoned breakfast
writes a manifesto.
Our anonymous
patrons of the arts,
rattle off to the dawn.
Fortified,
we sit,
pushing dreams
through misted windows,
onto mirrored,
rain sodden streets.
From the 5am sanctuary
of Masarykovo Nadraji.
Ben Greenland
- Masarykovo Nadraji is a small railway station in the centre of Prague that serves the suburbs and outlying industrial areas of the city. The buffet there used to be open all night serving cheap food and drinks for the workers passing through the station.
- A Rholiky is a small bread roll. The cheapest food available in Prague at the time. They were three for one Krone, about three pence.