Outside Santa Maria in Trastevere

You tell your parents we are getting on.
  Like one’s reflection around a missing pane,
    bells do two-thirds of a resolving chord.
  Vendors lift their wares in linens—think
of Cleopatra in her rug—as police
  pace lazily up one end of the alley.
    Let us not be reduced to history.
  Bruno fired near here; near, the Jewish ghetto
where many survived, comparatively.
  Just: cappuccino’s gentle bitterness.
    How the foam’s holes widen, evidential
  as Caesar’s dagger-starred tunic: here
is where one entered …
            We better wrap this up,
  you say. I better let you go. Vendors
    hawk cupid crotch lighters, mechanical bees
  past the café rail. Is God obsolete,
a stopped tour guide asks her parasol.
  I hear: up the sleeve, like the sudden World
    or Fool a fortune teller scratches out
  existence with. Along these lines: strange grace
of bells that ring with a rag’s polishing.