Listen now to the soundless exodus of snow, the brash belly-call of the European raven, the cemetery of minutes in the wake of a ticking hand, the Rynek Główny breathing through a thousand lungs, the market of hanging fabric and soft grease, the inheritance of change from hand to hand as I buy a floral shawl; the shawl is thin and verdigris, daubed with painted flowers, useless for the cold, or for cold like this: the air is made of ghosts, of gelid fingers invisible and desperate, desperate to touch every glimpse of exposed skin.
Dream-walking in Arcadia, I cleave from every instinct, the city holographic and parallel to this vision, headphones in my ears, reality guttering and flickering out, the Polish shawl an invisibility cloak, the buildings creatures of lumbering fantasy, the faces of strangers like arcane emissaries. The dream blooms, but reality snakes in. Now there are soldiers here, here in this fantasia of a city, this romance I fell for, with the festooned draft horses, the snow, the thirteenth-century architecture, the Polish lettering — my adopted home is shaking and curling like paper exposed to a flame.
I watch the soldiers walking together. I see one, in the ochre spill of evening, talking to a civilian. I notice an American flag on his sleeve — other soldiers have the Polish flag, red on white, blood on skin. The border is a two-hour drive from here, and Kraków is filling up with refugees. I see them in Galeria Krakowska with their luggage, faces inscrutable; I feel the atmosphere warp in real time. There is heaviness now, pooling in the street like thawed ice. People are dying. The restaurants scratch out the word ‘Russian’ from their menus; Ukrainian flags appear in windows. I want arms as big as the ocean, big enough to hold the displaced, to hold the rising dark, to hold the rage, to hold the death, to hold the wild-eyed swell. My small arms and gloved hands hold nothing, just a shawl, a souvenir, something tourists buy at the market, a token, kitsch and flimsy. Ból trwa bez końca. The snow continues to fall.
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