How do you discover and befriend a place
One way is walk around get a sense of space
Location matters much for anything
Knowing is to assimilate and participate
Spatially and then into its surroundings
The front versus the back, east and west
Who lives where and what’s located where
Such a walk around the Vatican its colonnades
Piazza giving way to mighty walls of Gregory
The housing of clergy, nuns and guests
Some local residents
The hill upwards behind and in full view
Yet another of the several hills prominent
Making Rome ancient and modern
The full circle from the Piazza San Pietro
To the Santa Anna Chiesa and Porta
Around the Vatican Museum with queues
Any day that daunts you with pre-booked
Visitors in early attendance for a tour
Of the heritage of modernity and antiquity
Fusing with a transformative movement
Replicated and preserved as in little else
One gets reminded of Beijing and Tianjin
New Delhi and Old along the Jumna and Ganges
All the way to Benares, Sarnath, Bodhgaya
Contestations of far distant times and modes
Being revisited in AI and Digital post-humanity
In search of a future beyond the planet itself
To leave a mark nowhere without posterity
To make sense of what transpired in ways
Humanity as of now, has not conjectured
Or do we really know what exists beyond
Knowing and measuring what’s known
The wager is on, and every thought
Seems to matter in the journey onward.