Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.v

 from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

 

26 Piazza di Spagna

Rain, dull days of it – a pocket of sleet

empties in the fountain of bees and suns.

First one, then twos and threes, yellow-ray

umbrellas open on the Spanish Steps, where

Mussolini’s mock-heroics nail each building to its time,

fascisti graffito SPQR – a camp commemoration

bull-necked on the plinths.

In Prada, colour-wheel handbags

for schoolgirl Japanese… what else…?

My father came through in ‘forty-four,

between somewhere and anywhere. I have a photo,

of him in Army-issue shades, leaning on a Jeep, 

in one hand a Chianti bottle, in the other

a Lucky Strike.

Time accommodates, healing nothing here.

The rocket taxi carves new shortcuts

through the crowds –’Don’t worry, Mister,

I drive Roma plenty’.

… What else…?

Rain, dull days of it, sleet

waited-out in doorways – time and raw colour,

the cough that killed Keats.