Vaclav Havel

That wry smile kept its secrets with sly mischief;
Even at the moment of greatest danger,
He would throw in a smoke bomb, a joke,
A man in the crowd, no vaunting Messiah,
Yet somehow untouchable, remote.

He felt an impostor on his newfound throne;
Any moment, surely, They would come for him again,
Strip him bare, throw him back into prison,
Laughing like hyenas at their brilliant trick.

A scruffy nondescript bohemian fellow,
Rumpled and nervous, fiddling with a cigarette,
Noting his thinning hair in the mirror,
His voice a rasping monotone through clenched teeth,
He shyly yoked his staunch heart to the cause.

Surrounded from birth by lies and disguises,
Astronaut of the Unreal, cast adrift in space,
Only the truth could bring him back to earth
And fill his shrivelled lungs with oxygen.

Bemused, he looked life shyly in the eyes,
A lone diver befriending a dolphin in the deep,
Embracing with surprised love, holding on
To a miracle, a moment, a transformation.

Each word on the page cost a lifetime’s effort;
He went to the stage as Jan Huss to the stake,
Offering all for the moment of communion,
Pointing through the walls to freedom.

He saw the true faces behind carnival masks,
The damned souls meeting in awkward dances,
The laughter choking into sobs in the dark.

Man must make his stand here, in the sad heart
Of Europe, rediscover the marrow in the bone,
The meaning of love, responsibility, trust.

Self-doubt was the hound to his fox;
Many times he died and came to life again,
Astonished to find himself invincible.
Slowly realizing the rules of the game,
He turned the tables on despair.

Suddenly all the skulls were laughing,
The skeletons were dancing in streets and squares,
The church bells were ringing, the clocks were striking,
The sun was rising over the bridges.

Raffish Chaplin tripping with jaunty zest,
He opened his loneliness out into space
And watched the birth of galaxies, chuckling.

Lopsided at an angle to the norm,
He revelled in singularity, sneaking through checkpoints,
Tearing up yesterday’s identity card.

Modestly, reluctantly, he assumed the crown
And entered another theatre, unsure of his lines,
Determined to make this new role his own,
No man’s puppet, cutting the strings.
In the end there was the language in his mouth,
The roots of words to be rediscovered,
The bridges to be reconstructed,
The hands reaching out for his hands.