A bird executes its spirals high above the parapet of a Town Hall; it’s off to the cupola of the Church when the hour strikes…frightened, a mortality of wings with the span of a psalter. A stubby stooped who knows what, whether conjugated masculine, feminine, or both or neither, and just old — old the same appellation as this part of town, Old Town — sits on a bench, cadastral registry #1492, done with his or her scattering to this bird and others, them all: the bird, or Bird, however it’s registered, Spinozist, Platonic…a handful of soapflakes this tubby lubber thinks is feed, then sips at a cup of groggy med, dabs lips with cuff and in words no one understands, are they even words how should He know, addresses the problems of an earlier regime. This person, too, is on payroll, you have to think, be cautious, aware, they all are, and Him as well, maybe, I hope not, what’re they making these days, let me sleep on it…perhaps even the dead are in on it, too, the stones underfoot unmarked as their graves: pavingstones marking martyrs, cobbles sufficing for cowards. Memorials. To memory. Statues to shrines, plaques to yesterday’s plinth upon which rests the day before that. A reparation of time and of space, if that’s possible, to make up for…to stand here in the Square, again. With an ache in the rib, in His spine, in the rib that is His spine and was mud’s, watered from dirt downed from stones, from the cobbles, the pavings chiseled to pillows…a dream, telling Him go further, gone not far enough yet — to arrive, only to flee.
In the echoes of the hour just dying, the tolling toil of metal amid the eaves of the Church, another noise fills the Square, scatters the birds, sends the vendors scurrying home, abandoning their carts in midsale. A siren, it’s summoning. And in a moment, a host of auscasts and untliers and the strangering such emerges from the alleys, they invade from the sidestreets, occupying the Square; they attempt to march in lines, inline, they stumble like foreigners, they are foreigners, they embarrass only themselves, shame silence with greetings, warning, farewells: it’s American, no doubt about it — when you open your mouth, B thinks, how they know who you are; better to keep your mouth shut, best to have no tongue to keep. They’re the tourists, fellowtravelers, equally estranged, from Him, from themselves: vacationers amid death. Theirs is a forced march. One attraction to another, step-by-step then stumble. Take your time. A crunch of boot on hand coming down, crackled middle of an adagietto keyed in the minor: right at the height of an invisible violin’s tessitura, as it reaches for — a voice hacks out of the PA’s speakers nailed to spired poles, as sundials they shadow the Square; its message arrives Godlike, and Himlike, too, uslike, within a whirlwind of our own making, and in every language sounding at once, which is none. Babel on a bad day. Come again. Welcome to Polandland, it says. Please Stay In Your Lines. Welcome to Polandland. Your Guide Will Be With You Shortly.
