Ode to Asolo

As I look back at my life, this is the place: Asolo

We were confined to this village, but to what a place!

I was 19 and in love.

I was torn away from my country, sent by a foreign force out of a war I wanted to rejoin and eventually did.

I ran a school for interned children, got BBC news from our British landlady, Mrs. Malipiero, wife of the renown composer.

Read Dos Passos and Steinbeck in Italian.

Played soccer with Armenian monks.

Wrote political manifestos in bottles, burying them in the fields.

The interlude was pure youthful romance in midst of a most cruel war.

Nothing since matched its impact.