nonpd: a poem by billy collins

[janet paterson <janet313@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

              By a Swimming Pool outside Syracusa

              All afternoon I have been struggling
              to communicate in Italian
              with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun
              to resemble the two male characters
              in my Italian for Beginners,
              the ones who are always shopping
              or inquiring about the times of trains,
              and now I can hardly speak or write English.

              I have made important pronouncements
              in this remote limestone valley
              with its trickle of a river,
              stating that it seems hotter
              today even than it was yesterday
              and that swimming is very good for you,
              very beneficial, you might say.
              I also posed burning questions
              about the hours of the archaeological museum
              and the location of the local necropolis.

              But now I am alone in the evening light
              which has softened the white cliffs,
              and I have had a little gin in a glass with ice
              which has softened my mood or?
              how would you say in English?
              has allowed my thoughts to traverse my brain
              with greater gentleness, shall we say,

              or, to put it less literally,
              this drink has extended permission
              to my mind to feel?what's the word??
              a friendship with the vast sky
              which is very?give me a minute?very blue
              but with much great paleness
              at this special time of day, or as we say in America, now.



              Billy Collins
              The Gettysburg Review
              Volume 13, Number 3
              Autumn 2000


Copyright 2000 The Daily Poetry Association



janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype parkie
53 now /44 dx cd / 43 onset cd /41 dx pd / 37 onset pd
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