Uniform of perception, masking of distinction, the first snows are pristine. From the windows, children crane to see the white fields and folds of their landscape. Eyes widen, mouths slightly open. Sunless light, bright with reflection, traverses the glass pains and draws the first snows across parquets, tables, into our homes – no quarter is untouched, unaffected, unwhitened.
The whitened sepulchral shroud of winter is now laid out over the city. Silence reigns.
Under the first snows, Belgrade is Budapest, Bratislava, Sofia. Under the still clear snows, all disjointed parts integrate. Men in tuxedos, waiters and soldiers in uniform – individual distinctiveness pales and is subsumed in the greater, wider scope of vision.
All white. All vast. All one.
First snows evanescent. The white blanket is frail and erethreal. In moments, old features protrude, reemerge. Patches of brown and black multiply, leaving a tattered sheet of white to connect the shaded places. And the city returns. Harsh voices, metallic sounds, and atramental clouds billow again from snow-cleared cars.
The moment of the first snow blurs and fades into memory within the time it takes to perceive its luminous immensity.
First snow.
