Incantation

As it was, it still is. An incantation. The heart of Saint-Flour, caught in amber. The Singer poster gives it away. The boulangerie, the fountain, the dog standing sentinel in the square as if waiting for someone who stepped away a century ago and might return at any moment. Auvergne as spell, as once-was. In every time, in any time. It beats devoid of specifics in a sea of detail—every shutter, every cobblestone, every chapeau caught by the camera's patient eye. The scene is hyper-specific, yet what it means remains ungraspable, swirling at the edge of articulation. History as present, not past. The man seated on the ground in the foreground, the children gathered at the bakery window, the woman in white on the right edge about to step out of the frame—they're all still there in some sense, aren't they? The heartbeat of this city. A place that belongs to no single time. A place for the ages.