to Rome, la città aperta
The light here is ancient, the chaos older still— buzzing across the Appian Way, but one of the every that lead to the city eternal, suspended, you can hear her muffled roars, traces of a hungry mouth with frazzled mane a cracked throat craving aqueducts defunct, now long dry and thistle crowned. What could appear as more bereft than landscapes of rubble, marble stripped and sun burnt, awaiting still another ravaging? Yet therein is her secret held: there remains in these fabled ruins, bequeathed to us as though our coming had been foretold, a quivering palpable beneath the footfalls of our approach waiting to be given voice and body— for a city is never completed, only inherited.
Poem by David Warren Grunner and Photographs by Nic Rue.