On a belated honeymoon in Italy
we wandered around the Roman Forum
amazed at the ruins, imagining how they
looked once, how they had fallen so, eaten
away by time and endless stares of tourists
who only wanted to touch history as if
it would grant them momentary immortality.
Friends visiting Turkey sent pictures
of the Hagia Sophia and that, in turn,
returned my thought to Rome, to what
had once been and still was, however
altered by time’s often cruel passage.
What will those wandering about here
a millennium or two from now find
interesting or awe inspiring from this time,
what will they imagine it was like
as we know it now, or will, as is possible,
there will be no one left to wonder
about anything human, we by then
having been rendered yet another exhibit
in the gallery of extinct species