The first shadows appear like cells slowly dividing
from every tree and lamppost, while my first words
divide from me onto my journal, trying to capture
how dawn light melts over the city's blank windows,
and its ancient doors, opened a thousand-thousand
mornings to the sun with questions, and closed
on the moon's face without answers. All the days
that have fallen through these courtyards and alleys,
the lives that have worn these cobble stones gray,
all the gray doves that have been cast into flight
by how many church bells? After all the centuries
that have been tolled, hour by hour, and disappeared
above these domes, can it matter that I'm here now:
watching the bougainvillea blaze over the terraces,
counting on the morning to dive into the fountains,
flicker over coins, light the water up with my wishes?
Today, a temple will lose yet another stone that will
continue being a stone, and the Colosseum will move
again through its own shadow. Today, the murdered
and murderers will be remembered and forgotten,
and an empire pardoned for the sake of its beauty
in this city where time is an art. Today, a tourist
once again sits at a café with an espresso, a pen,
waiting to enter the Pantheon, waiting to gaze up
into its oculus, opening like a moonful of sunlight
in its dome, ready to stand in that beam of light,
feel something radiant, and write it down.