On the Lawn at the Villa

On the lawn at the villa—

That’s the way to start, eh, reader?

We know where we stand—somewhere expensive—

You and I imperturbes, as Walt would say,

Before the diversions of wealth, you and I engagés.

On the lawn at the villa

Sat a manufacturer of explosives,

His wife from Paris,

And a young man named Bruno,

And myself, being American,

Willing to talk to these malefactors,

The manufacturer of explosives, and so on,

But somehow superior. By that I mean democratic.

It’s complicated, being an American,

Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time.

Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem.

We were all sitting there paralyzed

In the hot Tuscan afternoon,

And the bodies of the machine-gun crew were draped over the balcony.

So we sat there all afternoon.

Copyright Credit: Louis Simpson, “On the Lawn at the Villa” from The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001. Copyright © 2003 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Collected Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 1988)