Original Post One Week Three

This is based off of James Wright's translation of Hermann Hesse's "Ravenna (1)."

Spoleto (1)

I, too, have been in Spoleto.
It is a little city, dead,
that has fountains and an aqueduct.
You can read about it online.

You walk up the hill and across the bridge:
the streets are cobbled and smell of pigeon shit and sewers,
emptied of a hundred thousand years,
and cats and graffiti decorates the walls.

This is what old books are like-
You read them, breathe in, and soak
in the fact that World War Two missed this city.
So small, folding in on itself.