Photographic Evidence

Though of course it can be doctored, I’m presenting photographic evidence that a winter sun does shine in Kraków. Exhibit A: Town Hall Tower—see that buttery brightness, high on the left shoulder. Exhibit B : Wawel Cathedral—notice, shadows! and the unusual brightness of the gilded dome of the Zygmunt Chapel, under which lie the remains of the Jagiełłonian dynasty. Exhibit C: normally inky green, almost black, what is the source of that bright path reflecting off the River Wisła? Exhibit D: observe the whiteness, the białoność, of that quartet of swans in diamond formation flying low over the river, otherwise unremarkable.

 

 

For almost two weeks, under low gray skies, in fog and wet white flurries, and the constant sifting of winter flour, I’ve hastily visited my old city haunts and run my daily errands. The cold, though hardly frigid by Minnesota standards, would drip down my neck and collect in the toes of my half boots, keeping me otherwise indoors with the dictionary. But Thursday, the sun dawned and endured through the afternoon, not blazingly or blindingly, but incandescently and warmly enough, to bring me more leisurely into the streets. Kraków, and Poland generally, has an elegiac quality—loss, displacement is big here. But that sense of loss doesn’t seem to succumb to despair. The sun has shone often enough in winter, long enough and warmly enough to sustain a city for a thousand years.