With time the villas and the markets tilt, they open to the skyand down their throats Via dell’Impero pours pitch,a foot on the face, the Roman way.Ideas of empire, vanity, the pointless anger of Rome’s cars,are in my mind, crossing the loud black circuitround the museum gardens. No emperors here these days,unless you count Apollo accosting a marble Daphneon the point of disappearing. In the taut arc of his wantingthe statue seems to turn and turn…Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss.Cops cruise the streetslike thuggish extras waiting for the film to startand once I saw a knife-fight over Ray Ban glassesamong the loitering boys, who lose their looks too soon.What is worth wanting like this?Under the city of the seven hillsthe eyes and mouths of statues, filled with earth.And the city, like a sacred river, bears me on.____Joan Kerr is a widely published Australian poet, and the recipient of awards including the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Prize, the Henry Kendall Poetry Prize, the Woorilla Prize, the W.B. Yeats prize and the Dorothy Porter Poetry Award. Together with Gabrielle Daly, she writes comic novels under the name Gert Loveday (“Writing is Easy” and “Crane Mansions”.) They blog on books, writing and all kinds of literary fun at Gert Loveday - Fun with Books.