Krakow

March 24, 2026

Evening of an excellent day. 

Swans fly over and float on the green back of the Wistula

The reading was not at the university, but in the market square (“the largest in medieval Europe”), as part of a festival I never properly understood, but whose central events  were a giant balloon and a track meet rather than a gathering of dottering international poets. It’s all right. I was cheered madly by people who likely didn’t understand a word I’d said. I gave my book to a woman standing nearby. Maybe it will be the occasion of my return. The boys flying around the square with batons in their hands were unspeakably beautiful, carrying themselves upright like gods charging into battle. Lunched at Piano Rouge so I could continue to watch the heats. The French family behind me was loud and funny, enjoying one another’s company. 

Today’s foot tour of the city was informative, but– the Guided Tour has never been one of my favorite things, and I’ve fallen into the flaming, thundering core of it. The guide women are supernatural in their ability to keep the vocal stream going minute after minute without so much as an interrupting breath. Even pleasant voices cloy. Had to take the device out of my ear finally to keep from going berserk, thus missing city blocks of interesting information. Visited Wawel Castle, where it all started. Heard the charming story of the Krakow dragon. Got to St Mary’s Basilica in time to be in the front row for the Opening of the Altar, one firmament of sculpted gold opening to reveal a yet grander one. A nun enters with a stick and pulls aside the golden curtain.

Bussed to the suburbs to see the Krakow Ghetto, which, unlike Warsaw’s, still stands. Empty metal chairs stand in the town square, each one representing 3000 people annihilated. One person in six was a Jew in Krakow in 1938. The Jewish population of the city now stands at 350. According to Michaela, one and a half million people in Warsaw in 1938 had become 1000 and 1945.  You’d expect such a place to be a ruin for a thousand years. 

On my way back to the hotel for a nap I trundled through the covered market, where I could choose from a near infinity of items made of amber. At the end of it I met Tomas, who touched my shoulder and said, “You! I want to ask you a question!” I stopped to listen. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “What do you think of Trump?” I told him, and we spent the next several minutes enlarging upon each other’s loathing. Tomas lived in Chicago for five years, where a black man aimed a gun at him and he was told to go somewhere else when he pulled into an all-Black service station. He was born in 1986, and had been in the World Trade Center 17 days before 9/11. He was still reeling from an American girl he liked who turned out to be a Trumpist, that being the deal breaker. His aunt is now visiting from Virginia Beach. He typed the address of the art museum into my phone. His parents had sent him to school in London, and he asked me to critique his English, which is clear but also clearly Polish. Tomas is handsome, rugged-looking, with stone green steady eyes. He touched and poked me as he talked, as old (and Polish) friends might do, and I took that as a greater compliment than if the crowd had swooned over my locally unintelligible poems. I think the original contact was to enlist me for a tour, but almost immediately he said, “I don’t want anything from you.” Part of me murmured “pity.” His friend with the glasses speaks seven languages. Sometimes the angel steps out of the crowd and gives meaning to what was a tangle of unrelated impressions. I have a friend in Krakow.