On the Lawn at the Villa

By Louis Simpson 1923–2012 Louis Simpson

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.

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)

Biography

Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in 1923, in Jamaica, to Scottish and Russian parents. A contemporary of Confessional poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, Simpson’s early work followed a familiar arc. In the New York Times Book Review, critic David Orr noted its highlights: “Simpson has followed a path lined with signposts sunk so deep in our nation's poetic terra firma that . . .

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