On the Appian Way

DAY III STARTING AGAIN: WALKING OUT OF ROME
(21 April, 1981)

Why have you come here?, coldly loneliness
Asks as I lose my English social dress
And grope for a peninsular one. Be resolute,
I tell my beating heart: we'll start again on foot:
Go back to Go.
              A good transistor blues
Sounds in the Valley of the Latin Muse,
And kicking back a ball to Remus' sons
Where Porta Capena was a goal-mouth once,
I pace from Rome; and wandering in and out
Of little churches, Baedeker-devout,
Look forward to the blessing of good food.
Then, is it greed that spoils my gracious mood?
Something about the three grilled quails is wrong . . .
Like flattened frogs . . . the fourth looks on without a song . . .
...