Robert Tilleard

IN THE VILLA BORGHESE GARDENS (revised)

It has been said the Borghese garden\'s

Parasol pines are green floating islands,

The cypresses funereal candles.

The ilex is ancient and undisturbed.

Today by the Temple of Asclepius

There are four women, three smoking -

Ma fumavano con eleganza;

Two old men, arm in arm, time-honoured friends;

A young cellist practicing by the lake;

Couples tucked into small flat-bottomed boats;

Playful children trying to be trying.

But beyond these children, this novice cellist,

These two old men and those smoking women,

The eternal ilex, the floating pine,

The tall crepuscular cypress candles,

And the distant drone of encircling cars.

Beyond this Arcadian dreaming

Once skulked the memento mori,

The ‘bad air’ – the ghost of malaria.

There is abroad another pestilence -

Though not here, a remote threatening dread,

The constant throb of imminent conflict,

A replicating worm in the apple

Of this pure prelapsarian garden,

A circulating serpent of bad blood

Joining with the miasma to defile

The undefiled bodies in far-off lands.