Rome lays bare its bones,

a body dissected for sightseers:

in a corner of the square, the spot in 44 BC

where the Senate met and Caesar fell.

Pillars, ruined temples, marble lavs

uncovered, for the cats to colonise.

Let developers

gnash their teeth in vain.   

 

In the nearby shadows of a back street

small shrine to politician Aldo Moro,

found in the boot of a Renault 4

on Via Michelangelo Caetani,

near the Jewish ghetto and the Tiber,

courtesy of the Brigate Rosse,

twentieth-century Marxist-Leninists

observing the customs of the city.