.
Market, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 27 February 2007
Dark shapes bundled
against the weather
separate, each an other
body
world closed
upon itself
no one looks up
masked passers-by
slowly
moving, known only
to the night and the cold
Market, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 27 February 2007
Market, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 27 February 2007
Market, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 27 February 2007
Market, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 27 February 2007
Woman on stairs, Poland: photo by czako_o, 2 May 2007
Railway station, Poland: photo by czako_o, 13 February 2007
Railway station, Poland: photo by czako_o, 11 May 2007
Railway station, Poland: photo by czako_o, 13 February 2007
Street, Sweden: photo by czako_o, 18 October 2006
Sidewalk, Sweden: photo by czako_o, 18 October 2006
Street, Poland, night: photo by czako_o, 12 May 2007
Street, Poland: photo by czako_o, 25 July 2007
Street, Poland: photo by czako_o, 25 July 2007
Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteYou have well-framed the sorrow, the ingrown toenail, the lonesome of the urban for those less-than-wealthy.
ReplyDeleteSo that's Poland. When you throw in the sort of "under the El" Sweden photo, I think I've seen places like this in and around Philadelphia, New York and Chicago. I see and intuit many stories here. Curtis
ReplyDelete"...the sorrow, the ingrown toenail, the lonesome of the urban for those less-than-wealthy."
ReplyDeleteMembers-in-good-standing of the Triumphalist Tech Empire are trained not to know about these things.
Riders of the tech company free shuttle buses may stare out the windows at the mysterious street caste of the hopeless and the despairing, much as safari tourists aboard the SUV in the Serengeti, but staring and seeing are not the same thing -- excessive material convenience, that blinding gift, appears to make individuals of this species immune to any putative or potential benefits of the clear, disinterested view.
In any case, to one confined within, on a night which out the fishbowl window looks very much like that night in Poland pictured in the top shot(s) here -- except for the fact that in Poland there is not the aching disparity of means, nor the historical illusion of "being free" -- the issue of what is to be done about that large and growing vagrant mass of bipeds who have been rendered not only "other" but useless, that is of no use to the forwarding of the digital capitalist imperative (i.e. unthinking product-acquisition), who are in fact simply in the way -- remains moot.
It's coming down in black sheets...
the rain comes down first in color,
ReplyDeletethen in black and white,
just as it should.
and note carefully,
how the encroaching shadows
move with you, quick and certain,
like a predator about to pounce.
and how
under the guise of departing
for some unknown destination
people stand and wait
everybody comes and goes into the light
into the bardo of what’s next
The "dark shapes" in the photos hurt the heart.
ReplyDeleteA very beautiful poem.
A sense of bumbling much as a blind man, of late -- talking of dark shapes.
ReplyDeleteThen again, here's a thing:
Hazen Robert Walker: "the rain comes down..."