A Christmas poem

Notes Toward a Christmas, 2006

There are lights. Hair.
On the street corners, fish
move in heavy, slow

possession of their vats. Hands take them and they go,
unresisting,
to be weighed. There is cold.

There are countable strands
of breath. Everything
has substance.

In the smokestacks of the world, a switch
is off,
attentive,

ready
for the paperwork, the painted surname
on a suitcase, unused,

the country of origin,
age.
Shoe size.

The tour guide at Auschwitz is a pretty blonde.
A tour of the world,
she says, would be similar,

but shorter.
This is still happening.
People ask me, and I tell them,

this is happening right now.
On the train,
in the train’s forgetfulness

between two countries, you flash
your passport.
You are light as air in this new world

but the border
is earth,
is long,

and has substance. Everything that has substance
can be burned. A cloth star,
a new year.

On the corner, one loose strand of your hair
falls into the water,
and you don't notice. There are lights. The dark fish, somewhere

between the vat
and your hands,
has been switched for a brighter one.


25 December
Brno, Czech Republic

Brno Sweet Brno

Christmas Day was bright and sunny here, so I decided to head out and explore the hills near my neighborhood. After hiking for awhile I made it to the top of a ridge, and looking back, I could see spread out against the hills the spectacular swath of paneláky (Commie-era apartment blocks) that are characteristic of Czech cities in general, and Brno in particular. Keep in mind you're looking at only a thin section of the city here. I'm lucky enough to live in a small, pleasing-looking panelák on the very edge of town. I don't envy those who live deeper inside the suburban jungle. But as you can see, on a sunny day, from a distance, the paneláky can look quite shiny and serene.

Auschwitz

The site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp is about an hour and a half from Kraków (see previous post), so many tourists make a day trip there. I met a Canadian woman named Christine at the hostel in Kraków, and we toured the site together. I'm not going to blab on about my visit there. It was what you might expect, and it was also very different from what you might expect. Here are some pictures. The blurry one of me was taken in front of the so-called "Death Wall" where some 5000 prisoners were executed.

Kraków

The week before Christmas I hopped some trains and went to Poland. Everyone says Kraków is the place to be, and after spending a few days there I have to second that. It was the capital of Poland for many centuries, and around every corner there's some stunning building to drool over. At the same time, its architecture (and its people) haven't completely lost that post-Communist awkwardness that makes this part of the world so odd and charming. Don't ask me to explain what I mean by that. I think you have to be here to understand.

Since Polish is similar to Czech, I thought I would have a fairly easy time understanding basic signs and phrases. Unfortunately, I underestimated how preposterous Polish is. First of all, written Polish seems to use twice as many letters as Czech, making the words incomprehensible. What's more, Polish has several sounds that Czech doesn't have. So while Czech is universally recognized as unpronounceable, Polish is just plain absurd.

Still, my biggest culture shock wasn't the language (especially since Kraków is teeming with English speakers) but the massive, new, gleaming-white mega-mall that's the first thing you see as you walk out of the train station (see the bottom picture). It's three floors of shopping glory, and you can follow an endless stream of people pulsing out of the old town and into its big glass doors. Even for a boy raised in the glow of North American consumerism, it was overwhelming. I can't imagine what the older Polish generations must feel as they ride those blinding escalators, something like the crazy vertigo of a whole half-century passing in the span of a decade. Like a big whoosh.

I've been busy lately so I haven't posted anything.

As you can see from the subject of this post, I've been pretty busy lately, so...I really haven't posted anything.