Head down, the Pope stalked the Coliseum grounds, his right arm behind him and his scepter hooked into my belt loop. We crossed screaming children and flower mongers. These latter the old man had no patience for whatsoever, battering them aside with a foul gibberish, later explained to me to be his willful execution of tongues. Above us loomed all of Rome.
The Coliseum is no longer open to the public. Parts of it have been reconstructed according to historical estimations, but the greater part of it is still bare. Holes abound where timber rafters once penetrated the massive outer walls. And the Pope told me, too, bronze figureheads decorated its now excoriated faces. But despite the vastness of modern repatriation, the Coliseum remains as solid a chunk of time as the millennia have produ
