opossumsal1
Where beams of imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
-- Alexander Pope
opossumsal1
SUNSET IN ROME
Maybe the ingredients are very much the same,
Maybe its the same method used for an updated game,
Maybe the paths are paved in a slightly different way,
But the sun still sets at the end of every single day.
And when I now walk the streets in my adopted home,
Sometimes I feel glad to be breathing in Rome,
The chaos, the mess, the beauty and the old,
A million stories in every footstep not yet told.
Buried treasures lay forgotten underneath a million feet,
Many wars won here added with a couple of defeats,
A great empire grew from the roots of this place,
A magnificent old world that changed the human race.
And here I walk upon ancient roman roads,
Where marched Caesars armies and later the ransacking hordes,
I see where the churches pillaged ancient ruins, now bare,
Destroying ancient culture for their self-desire without a care.
I stop for a while in one of a million bars,
Sipping Italian coffee within the fumes of fags and cigars,
I pass Piazza Spagna and end up in Piazza di Popolo,
Back down Via Corso my pace a sprint, others so slow.
Time passes as most head to the traditional Trattoria,
Most of the young foreigners would just settle for a beer,
Me? I find myself in yet another Pizzeria,
A couple of slices of pizza as the Pope passes near!
So as the sun sets the eternal city comes alight,
A thousand monuments aglow in this warm autumn night,
Scooters whiz past in what seems a suicidal trance,
The Italians get dressed up, as if it was to be their last dance.
Here in middle Italy, my new adopted home,
And yet again the sun has now set on Rome.
Darren Hobson
opossumsal1
"Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life."
--Anna Akhmatova
opossumsal1
"What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago."
--Erica Jong
opossumsal1
"The Creator made Italy from designs by Michaelangelo."
--Mark Twain
