The composer Respighi detected it in a city
Of pines and fountains. The Fontana di Trevi’s thunder
And Piazza Navona’s High Baroque rivers are pretty
Familiar; as for the trees, well, no wonder
If, in the original urban landscape, they’re
More of a rarity (some fine specimens round
By the Forum). But it’s not in wood or stone, where
All is classical nobility, or in the lush sound
Of a tone-poem representing these,
That the whiff of La Dolce Vita is caught most fresh.
Its essence is found in the petrol-polluted breeze
That winds its mad-cap way through the tangled mesh
Of side-streets, marking out the giddy track
Of a langorous Roman borne off on a moped’s back.
Of pines and fountains. The Fontana di Trevi’s thunder
And Piazza Navona’s High Baroque rivers are pretty
Familiar; as for the trees, well, no wonder
If, in the original urban landscape, they’re
More of a rarity (some fine specimens round
By the Forum). But it’s not in wood or stone, where
All is classical nobility, or in the lush sound
Of a tone-poem representing these,
That the whiff of La Dolce Vita is caught most fresh.
Its essence is found in the petrol-polluted breeze
That winds its mad-cap way through the tangled mesh
Of side-streets, marking out the giddy track
Of a langorous Roman borne off on a moped’s back.
(3.4.1997)
