A World Below Glass

We visited Palazzo Valentini today.

(Here is a link if you'd like: http://www.palazzovalentini.it/index.php?lang=eng)

Our prompt today was to describe 4 rooms, each having a season that followed a literary archtype: summer: romance, spring: comedy, fall: tragedy, and winter: irony/satire. I'll share these snapshots with you:

Spring

Our own beloved stories must have first lived in Rome.
At the Pantheon, I entered the walls of Mines of Moria.
The Villa Julia, I saw the balcony of Juliet
There is even a statue near our apartment that glows green and stout
a Yoda he is.
Today, we entered the Twilight Zone (or the Tower of Terror)
with glass floors over a cemetery of pools, wells, and broken stairways.
An epic soundtrack and a man's enthuisastic voice lead us through the strange tour.
Our stomachs cringed as we were swallowed up in darkness,
and then watched the Roman world repainted, while teetering on glass.

Summer

The Roman recipe for roman-ce
needs only inspiration.
Love is crafted in the party pools under mosiac ceilings
with flushed servants carrying trays.
He orders flamingo tongue and she: peacock brain- a dainty morsel
she lifts to her lips, that flirts the torch light off her utensil.
He swallows hard, a tinge of sweat crowning his forehead.

Fall
 (to a Decian soldier)

Rome won because of its strength in weapons and organization.
I cannot fathom such a battle, that once adorned a temple's pillar in chiseled color.
They saluted your courage,
though their men pushed forward with swords
while holding your brothers' heads in their teeth,
and their women seared your naked, captured brothers with torches.
Though you died a humble beheading,
your king slit his throat to die proud.

 Here is the column, which once stood in the middle of the temple, telling the story of the Roman victory over the Decians (my spelling is likely terrible, but I'm having trouble finding out their correct name at the moment). It has over 2,500 characters etched from bottom to top. Everything had to be calculated from the beginning before hammering into the marble.

Winter

Goddess of knowledge and war,
Minerva went tumbling.
The archeologists found your white head
at the bottom of a hardened pool.
Helmet useless, your face slighted.
They inquire of you,
pleading for answers to the riddles
your faulty worshipers left behind.
What is a goddess without her people?
What knowledge to share, or war to advise
when her Romans find themselves deep under
a Renaissance tide?