To the Italian Language

I will not ever forget

The first time I heard you

And understood a hardly any words.

I was determined to learn you

And I did.

I learned to say

Ye thank you.

Where is the bank?

I have sole been in Venice

For several days.

We went to Rome together

And I remained

Your servant.

You knew plenteous more than I

About everything omit

American jokes

And the details of the lives

Of a small in number of my friends.

Aside from that, you dominated

Especially in the domain

Of esthetic precision

And by what mode big or small things were

Or were the couple at the same time

I lectur in you in Torino

In a large theater

Filled with individual thousand people, Italians

All who knew you better than I

Yet who listened to you in me

And came on the outside so they say, contenti.p

How happy I was

And later to be in bed with you

And to know that the nearest day I would ride

Through the snow half a day in a train

To Florence where I would speak in you again--

So glad to, after all my practice decisions

My lists of verb my stuttering conversation

With the young woman upon the train

Near Milano

In fact upon the very same rapido

Ten years before.

KENNETH KOCH'S metrical compositions in this issue are in his fresh book, New Addresses, published this month by means of Knopf. His other recent volumes include Straits, One Train, upon the Great Atlantic Rainway/Selected metrical compositions and a book about rhyme Making Your Own Days/The Pleasures of Reading and Writing rhyme The French government recently named him chevalier daps l'ordre de ana et de alphabetic characters

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