BREAKFAST AND JUKEBOX ON PIAZZA TRASIMENO

(Rome 1960)

Carabinieri on this August morning

when it does me good to see the sun

in its blue dish — although you guard

(keeping an eye on pretty girls and for the rest

making a slouch of it) — although you guard

the Soviet Mission come to sell who knows

what toothsome derricks to Catania

(they hatch their commerce in the sweetest oleandered

loggiad vined and pined palazzo

walls have ever kept from thieves and me),

you will not, will you, keep my Adriana

and myself from dancing one long tango in the street,

to mark, if nothing else, the anniversary of now,

for it was now last year today, and then

last April it was now, and Caesar too

was now, for Caesar did not live in Caesar’s past

nor can a clock however sluggish fall behind.

Soldiers! I swear we plot to throw no bomb!

The tango turns us to and fro. They stare at us

my lovely dear, they wonder as we fool about,

if, say, we caught a Russian head amid these pines,

might we not plant a kiss under its cap?

Are they to act in case of sudden bliss?

[Piazza Trasimeno is an inconspicuous little square in a fine residential area of Rome where the honeymooners had found an affordable pensione. A jukebox was playing in a nearby café.]