You take the 9.05.

across the river’s murky past

 

espresso clutched, again you puff

those deadly sticks.

 

The city breathes its history

laid out by hands whose words

 

you transcribe day by day

500 years of detailed text

 

only still to lock away

in hidden chapters in your head.

 

The evening’s dinner

lecture tour, those stranger’s faces

 

who applaud.

 

Safe from us the hungry hordes

of amateurs who long to see

 

through eyes that saw

through eyes that wept

 

500 hundred years of history

held captive by your PHD.