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 http://www.poems.com/ janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype parkie 53 now /44 dx cd / 43 onset cd /41 dx pd / 37 onset pd TEL: 613 256 8340 SMAIL: POBox 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada EMAIL: [log in to unmask] URL: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/