When the Russians arrive the town is empty, the streets deserted
not a soul. The women and children have long since been relocated
and the men are hiding in the mountains.
The Russians make themselves at home. The way the Germans did,
the way all men do in the palaces of war.
Later that night it begins to rain and it continues to rain for days.
It rains so long and hard that eventually the men
in the mountains are forced to come down, are driven down
by the deluge into the arms of the Russians. This is how my
grandfather is caught in the Ukraine and sent to Siberia.
This is all I know. There’s the part about: Manchester –
the Night Owls Squadron and the steamboat to Cape
Town but the rest is hearsay.
Kocham Praga / I Love Praga – another mural. more graffiti.
The thing about Warsaw / Warszawa I noticed first
was the liberation of the public space
given over to vandals and art. Willingly. A healthy
spirit of rebellion. Forgive don’t forget. Legia. Miecho.
Legia. The Polish premier league sits on the steps of a renovated
building smoking woodbines as we pass. Praga hasn’t always
been this inviting. Miecho means Kebab, if kebab were the only
thing in the world. A kebab the size and shape
of Sts. Michael and Florian Cathedral.
We walk towards the meeting point drinking our little monkeys
our malpecszi already noting how beautifully unrestored
some of the buildings are, how newly envisioned others,
when the bombs were dropped across vistula river the people
almost forced to go back to their chores bend their backs
ignore the screaming of planes
Almost. Everywhere the dashing P of the Warsaw Uprising
strikes defiant white paint against brick the Legia
personnel have been busy making up for the lost
time of their grandfathers.
My Polish isn’t great. In fact it is nowhere and later in Bialystok
I will be shouted at by a lady cleaning the restrooms for
entering without paying my one zloty, and all my new polished
words lambasted will abscond and I will realise standing
mute in front of her indignation, in a poverty of language
never before experienced
that without words we are
naked but I really needed to take that piss
so I went back and paid the machine.
The guide at first not knowing speaks mostly over my head
as I look down at his laminated file at the pictures of how
Praga grew through many ages.
And I remark in english and he switches back and forth
as we stop at new buildings reimagined alongside the
stalwarts of a more violent time, so that a dapple effect
emerges overlapping the various intonations
of a Praga redefining itself in the cool trendy
values of a new generation of lovers.
My grandfather never spoke about crossing Siberia nor
what might drive a man to find his way home
even when we were playing chess and his two bishops
alongside each other driving my seven year old
self so determined so anxious to win even then
to tears, and he would laugh but never give
an inch not once.
And those two fucking bishops even now where I can I
drive them forward toward my enemies
their influence spread out in crisscrossing waves there
were stories told after he died about a man
who loved cats catching and skinning
cats to survive. And the whiskey over
Wodka how perhaps starting a new life you
leave certain things behind.
But now, drinking nalewki along Zabkowska Str. in a small bar and
eatery Pyzy i Flaki the big fluffy dumplings and stew
crammed in no more chairs patrons standing out
in the thin autumn sun, somewhat thicker wind
and sausage and pierogi in jars, more nalewki
white horse whiskey aside there is so much time
I need to somehow find.
And between the russians and the germans there are spaces
I have to occupy a good polish soldier and later
somewhere in a club in Warszawa
I am forced down from the mountains
but it is no longer raining and I am
surrounded by Legia there is dancing.
This time we will win even if we do not we will rebuild some
things are worth fighting for worth remembering some
places worth returning to how ever many times
you are made to leave.
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