A Dream of Summer

(after Giosue Carducci) I dreamed of gentle things. My freshman year, a room where sun poured in, freedom from books, the thundering carts on cobbles in the via, a wreath of sorghum round my neck. To look out from my window was unbroken joy: one way those flower-carpeted old hills, the other, sparkling shoreline: still a boy, I splashed out on a suit, and shirts with frills! I'll never know that animal verve again. I'm sure that glittering sea, those slumbering isles, were not like now, prosaic. And summer rain, I swear, on mornings when it caught me, smiled.