Gregor’s mother, up all night, threatens
to strangle herself
with a headscarf if he won’t

stop with the schnapps, and get back

(Organ music rises)

to work at the shoe factory. Grete,
little sister, weeps in a corner. Unsteady
on a three-legged stool, she pokes

a pencil at her yellow-eyed distempered
cat, Proserpina. Gregor

shuts himself in, drowning
in the fitful swamp outside
Prague, where an iridescent

butterfly twists
to escape the dream. He rises

(Smell-O-Vision mist rises from armrests)

late to a throbbing hangover. Trying
to comb his hair, he snaps

an antenna, which
sags from his forehead. Out
of the bathroom, buttons

pop from his threadbare jacket. Exoskeleton
ankles jutting from his cuffs, nicotine
yellow bowtie splattered with carmine

polka dots, he’s ready for a long
day of scrivening. Mom and Sis,

(Close-up on twitching mandibles as he devours a chicken leg)

howl and throw books and chairs until
the policie arrive, blue
and yellow Citroens lurching

into the iron gate of their tenement. Gregor chews
them like pork sausages, then

(Scanning the bulvár with compound eyes)

rampages, towering above as they
scurry wielding nightsticks
and torches. What

about me? he bellows, deafening
the townsfolk. Seventy feet now, Gregor in a red

(Cut to a red-haired Romani woman with hand cymbals and scarves, belly dancing to guitar)

cape and blue beret, waves
to Mom and Sis, who chuck
stones at his ankles. The rolníci

(Cabaret music, circa 1936)

torch a bonfire. Gregor
nibbles on the wheel of an apple cart, knocks
the steeple off the St Vitus church, crumbles

the south gatehouse of the local
castle, and rewinds the Prague orlaj
with the feelers in his tail. Insane

with anger, a priest in the crowd yells, Kill it
before it reaches the cemetery! Staggering past
the bronze saints of Charles Bridge to St Nick, Gregor

(Cut to a blind beggar holding out his fingerless hand)

lurches toward Municipal House, then—turning
sadly, yet triumphantly toward
the cameraman who

pans slowly from the dolly—Gregor wades
into the Vlatava, slips

into the murk and swims toward Český
Krumlov. In front

(The present, two years later at Strahov Monastery)

of his hut, he turns an ox
on a spit. The flesh

(Fade…)

blisters and browns. Not far
off, a dog cries,

a gunshot.