that bright hill - 04-22-04

Berlin is mine alone, but Poland we could share. Surely you would see it the same as I - sad people, sad trains, sad everything! Sodden countryside with cinderblock houses on the local from Warsaw to Krakow. Rural poverty that looks too familiar.

Krakow is a city of sleepwalkers. Nodding off on street corners, people are slow to rouse themselves when the lights change. They move amongst lines of diesely cars whose drivers are themselves asleep.

After hours of stepping up and down curbs I find that I am also wavering somewhere in this troubled dream. I imagine the walkers always walking and the drivers always driving, through the endless bad weather of crowded streets.

If nothing else, it keeps the tourists at bay.

In a disused corner of a train station I awaken when a belligerent drunk jabs me hard in the ribs. He too is off in some sad dream.