Imprisoned lions: For decades, I have lived only blocks from the Rome Zoo, here euphemistically referred to as the Bioparco. I strolled its grounds a few times when I could still see, usually in the company of visitors who wanted to take a peek at the animals. But those days are long gone and now the zoo’s existence comes to mind at hourly intervals when a booming recorded female voice announces in both Italian and English that it is forbidden to feed the animals. But after the zoo closes in early evening, the tone changes. This is when I hear the roar of Bengal tigers, Serengeti lions, Siberian bears, and Indian elephants, a raw but sincere music I once found quaint. What could these caged animals be thinking, week after week, year after year? Only now, as a blind man, have I begun to understand. Their sounds are not casual. Each night they tell the world that they are locked in, imprisoned, deprived as I am deprived of a vital aspect of life, their autonomy, to roam and see the world outside their furnished prison. Like me, they desperately want something back. Like me, they will never attain it, so that every day by twilight they express their mournful regret just as, next-door to them, I more quietly mull over my own shut-in sadness.