The Pines of Rome

(for Katherine & Royston)

As ghosts of old legionaries, or the upright

farmers of that unbelievable republic,

the pines entail their roots among the rubble of baroque and modern Rome.

Out by the catacombs they essay a contradiction,

clattering their chariot-blade branches to deny

the Christian peace, the tourist's easy frisson, a long transfiguration.

Look away from Agnes and the bird-blind martyrs,

the sheep of God's amnesia, the holy city

never built, to the last flag of paganism flying in mosaic.

Then say the pines, though we are Papal like the chill

water of the aqueducts, refreshment from a state

divinity, we know that when they tombed the martyrs they ambushed them with joy.

Rome is all in bad taste and we are no exception

is their motto. Small wonder that Respighi, ‘the last Roman’,

adds recorded nightingales to his score The Pines of the Janiculum.

And the scent of pines as we dine at night

among the tethered goats and the Egyptian waiters

is a promise that everything stays forever foreign which settles down in Rome.

Therefore I nominate a Roman pine to

stand above my slab, and order a mosaic

of something small and scaly to represent my soul on its last journey.

PETER PORTER