Sectioned, I was sent to the Cicada Lunatic Asylum.
Doctor Coppola signed the papers.
His patients, he explained,
were beleaguered by obsessions.
Hence the cicadas which colonised the trees
in the great courtyard.
We were encouraged to adore them.
This was Doctor Coppola’s radical way
of defying insanity, he was known across Europe.
It wasn’t easy at first.
Sbagliando si impara.
Practice makes perfect.
Imagine locked wards of relatively decent people
flapping their tongues.
Even the cicadas thought we were cicadas.
Saturdays
Doctor Coppola conducted his monomaniacal troupe
from the gazebo.
People came from Spoleto: wooden benches,
jugs of wine, hand-rolled cigarettes.
Bravissimo! Bravissimo!
