Junkyard Post Three Week Four

While listening to one of the students read from Ciardi’s Inferno, I turn towards the aqueduct, watching two men jog past us. The one closest to us wears a bright yellow jogging vest and tight blue shorts. I wonder if they enjoy living here, running over ruins. It’s like the people of Spoleto turn the lights on for us, museum curators for a town that manicures the walls of another Spoleto: one from thousands of years ago, fighting the Byzantines and Alexander, one that spilled oil from the top of a building and blocks out the weeds. We want to see something spectacular, something Rome is not: controlled. Tamed.