Between the Lights

From time to time there are lights
CBS or NBC
once again discovers Prague
and the magic dies
if ever there was magic
Maybe just the pooling of our blood

Those of us who live and love
and fight the trams
when the eyes of the world are elsewhere
find it easier then
This life between the lights
The glare turned soft and silver smoked

Hemingway's not here, it couldn't be
the Paris of the twenties
Some godforsaken town will bear
decades from now
a similar sound byte description
and call itself the Prague of the nineties

And television lights will blaze again
across the startled faces
of writers trying to make it work
To pull down scattered circling thoughts
Longing for the quiet times
between the lights