The old ladies of Rome feed

Leftover bits of fish to

Savage house cats gone feral,

The females pregnant with

The alley fecundity

Of abandoned domestics.

These renegades gather now

In the long evening shadow of

Trajan’s still untottered column

As clients did, ex-slaves,

In the anterooms

Of Pompey and Caesar,

Cataline and Cicero,

They will approach

No closer than ten feet,

Then eat quickly, desperately.

The sharp old ladies of Rome

Know this. That’s why

They feed them. It compliments

Their benevolence

As their fathers learned it

In the anterooms of the

Orsini and Colonna,

Of Ciano and Mussolini.

This was published in ANALECTA, the University of Texas at Austin, 1974-1975, page 31.