Billy Collins (22 March 1941 - / New York City)

here we are, just imagine the scene with roberto and giuseppe, chissà che si saranno detti, but this poem so humorous is quite serious reflection about language, instead (and great laughing pleasure, also)

And this site has the copyright license to publish Collins' poems, I take it? Saying 'we'll take it down if he asks us to' is to act in bad faith.

After struggling to communicate with family members today I turned to poetry and found this. Humorous, calming, clever. Thanks, Billy.

Well, the problem is easily fixed - by including the whole thing in this comment.

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.

According to the version in my copy of 'Nine Horses', this is only the first few lines of a much longer and much more evocative poem.

goodness i know the feeling well...after teaching english to italians for 20 odd years i now speak english in the same strange way that they do