Miriam the Guide with her Group passing these houses also used as shuls and as shtibls, as places of worship, as corners of worship, as worshipnooks, or prayercracks, please notice — how their roofs sag under worries, stooped under the weight of the heaven the weights of the heavens their septenary sum; past the houses sagging under their roofs: thatched, timberframed, Miriam says, unframed, like here without door…knockknock, this poor quality wood, wormwood, turdwood, rotboard this collapse: these houses stoopshouldered, with no door in their doorways, openmouthed, how they’re gaping, stairtongue, step the buds, what’re they saying, calling out sore whose name or the wind through their windows shattered though shut under lids of dust under lashes of wind and dust shattering blindness, fever, and hunch; sgraffitod façades scumbled to innards, viscera, a decomposition from without to within as ashes to ashes to…Miriam the Guide with the Group, with her next Group, the Group always next, how she staggers them forward they’re staggering ever forward on over the Land — sagging under the weight of the houses humpbacked, so burdened they follow the passage parsing southwest toward cool noon, slowly manage the wide street, which is actually named Wide Street, which intersects Narrow Street (never doubt home’s street names again: how the Market’s on Market Street, the Synagogue’s on Synagogue Street, the Cemetery’s on…no, it’s on Butcher’s Street, sorry, named for the shop at its end — got you there, you’ve got to stay on your toes…ten, the quorum hoard of your wandering feet), which leads into and out of the Ghetto, leading them into and out of the city itself, the village, the town, Polandland’s proper limits coming toward the Square now as Wide Street as it widens itself into the Square that’s called a Square even though it’s a circle, and then — it’s enough: a street storelined, its Square shoplined, too, overpriced, why not splurge, it’s over so soon; and then, only a block more…a few blocks beyond the Square, north, east, if here there be blocks, even (grid superimposed upon grid, cycles atop cycles, clocking, a staggering mumble of settle after all’s razed to very foundations, then rebuilt to fallover again), Long Street, Short Street, she leads group after group, guides group after group after group, umbrellas them and herself from the wind and the rain and the snow a few steps more just a step, and it’s darker, quieter, it’s…a Quarter, says Miriam, this is a Quarter — shush silence, isn’t it heymisch? though Polandland’s been divided into many more than mere fourths…though the streets might’ve been straightened out (like one might shake out a sheet, wave out a tablecloth in preparation for a bridegroom’s banquet, the chatanchazzan’s drinkwindy, unwitnessed tisch), by the best efforts of what we call modernity, of an involved government and public goodwill, there are still traces, in the way their feet want to walk, in how their hands need to reach to touch and to hold, of the older ways and the winding ways, the natural course of decomposition, the unchanged change of decay leftalone, gnarled spines, splintered ribs, streets ghosting their own olden roads through newer guesthouses, deadroutes trod heavy through livingrooms, deadrooms, and over a light sleeper a stumble then out through their wardrobes, empty, the walls.
