A Glimpse of Poland
It is Easter time, Wielkanoc, in Krakow, Palm Sunday in the cathedral on Wawel, not to be confused with the incomparable dark chocolate from Warsaw, and the mass is full, palm fronds held in silence by hundreds of almost Midwich Cuckoos, blond and pale intense and green eyed, in the darkness of the cathedral. Intensity unknown now in the part of the world known as western.
This mound is the sacred womb of Poland where kings are made, world changing Popes created, and where the dragon sleeps still under the ground embraced by the huge sweep of the sacred Wisla river. The river that flows uphill through Poland from south to north nourishing each city with infinite memories of sacrifice and death, of tenaciously held secrets of beauty and intimacy.
Secrecy, intimacy, passion, perfection, laughter of stoic humourism of the inbuilt Polish resistance. In Krakow that Palm Sunday, Niedziela Palmowa, the traffic free streets were full of people dressed in their best, those beauteous kobieta in high heels and men in suits, going to mass, coming from mass, with tiny beribboned parcels of pastries and hand painted eggs. Kitsch is Polish, lying comfortably beside the most highly trained ear for music, and eagle eye for the perfection of art and style. The juxtaposition of itsy-bitsy painted crockery and lacy curtains bedded beside the power of the organ of the mysterious darkness in Bazilika Mariacka (the Basilica of Mary) where each listener is a professional critic of the way the Bach is played this day in the fairytale square n the centre of the town.
After the mass the pale intense parishioners make circles in the courtyard of the castle and dance ancient steps of propitiatory rites strangely similar to the sardanas of Catalunia, holding the palm fronds and clapping and smiling as people line up in a queue beside the wall where one at a time we stand pressed against the place in the wall where you can feel the energy of the dragon. Visitors from the Indian subcontinent are in the queue as when Krishna created the chakras of the world with his dance one of them fell right on Wawel.
Then I walk down to the river. More than a river, a huge sea of moving liquid from bank to bank, filling in the whole space so there are no places down by the river, just a completely flat mass of wall to wall water moving inexorably through to the next place I know and love Kazimiersz. Kazimersz. Soft in the mouth like the delicate pastries in the exquisite tea shop there with each little table different exquisitely arranged with lily of the valley on one and tuber roses on another and a piano playing and Polish laughter. The Poles love to laugh, especially the girls and ladies. Their talk sounds like the waves of the sea lapping intimate and close and interspersed with huge laughter as they make fun of, confide, create and maintain the invisible web of Polishness. Every name with so so many diminutives that you will never catch even who they are talking about, and even if you do learn a few words the languages is a secret one to be held onto as the way they have held onto being Polish, the very existence of Poland. Just the sound of the names is a secret, Czestochowa, where I saw the Black Madonna, Katowice where little round ladies in long skirts and head kerchiefs were sitting on tiny hand- made wooden stools selling bunches of lily of the valley from wicker baskets and Szczyrk, never managed to get that pronunciation even though I spent a week there in a really perfect time warp, a hotel unchanged since the 60s frozen in lovely space and serving mountains of fresh vegetables, soups, breads, fruits from the woods, a divine place.
I made quite an effort, well had some lessons from extraordinarily nice girls, Poland is full of them and exports thousands too, who were delighted to teach me to speak and who painstakingly worked to help me to recognise how I could say czesc just to begin with – though I still haven’t got it right! But at least I thought I’d got dzin dobry under my belt and with some trepidation would go to the sklep of a morning in Wojnowko where I bought a dear little house by the lake under huge gentle pines. Polish summer house. A Polish summer house. Magic places where there is infinite space, water, woods forever, cycling, voda, trees, water and woods, laughter and Polish shshsh flirting sounds of an evening. So every day I went to the skep to get chleb and milk and the sklep was part of the summer house of the owners who sat in the back chatting and laughing and sold veggies from their garden. I was the only non Polish person there and cared for with serious smiling courtesy and curiosity. Till way on into the autumn, well you’ve got to experience the autumn! Golden Poland it’s called and it is. The sweeps of woods for hundreds of miles turn completely golden and red and orange and you walk in paradise shuffling in gold dust looking for mushrooms, grzyby, which are a real Polish passion and cooked... well more of that another time...
It was getting colder and colder and very few of us left in the summer house place of Wojnowko, me hanging on walking in the golden woods picking up wood for my open fire of an evening, still swimming through the reflections of the flaming trees in the still warm water of the tiny lake and being given heaps of grzyby by the ladies who seemed to find them under every leaf. So as the almost solitary customer I toddled up to the sklep that morning and could see the babcia at the back by the stove with her hubby chatting and as I came into the sklep she got up and shrugged to her husband and said – here’s Pani dzien dobry! We looked at each other and all almost smiled – exactly I thought – Pani Dzien Dobry!
