Rome, Evening

Down the streets of Rome go trolleybuses,
trams full of men heading home: but
you're going out somewhere, in a hurry,
obsessed, like some longsuffered work
waits for you, when the rest go home.
Dinner is nearly done, and the breeze
smells of sullen family warmth
leaked through a thousand kitchens and
the long, lit streets
where shinier stars look down.
In the smarter streets there's peace,
shut-up, smug and
vile: what they all want,
to fill every evening of their lives.
Ah, you don't want that: to be
innocent in a guilty world...
So you're going down, down the bent,
dark road that goes to Trastevere:
...