Impossible Bottle

Now that the jet stream of tourism has been stanched

like blood from a wound, history's monuments

lie quiet as a postcard on a desk:

Coliseum-as-cow-pasture, its ivory crown

grandstanding between those horse-drawn wagons

and shepherdesses dazed in a wood of columns

of Pinelli's vedute romane. Today, the selfies

self-medicate. Echo of lion's roar and martyr's cry

are all you can make out against this riddle of sky.

The future is a phone call that won't quite go through.