“Quant’ è bella giovinezza,” exclaims my beloved every now and then out of the blue. Lorenzo il Magnifico has been on her mind as of late. I join her at once: “Che si fugge tuttavia.” We laugh and continue reciting, our heads raised high and our index fingers pointing upward: “Chi vuol esser lieto, sia.” The last word of this line gets a pretty heavy stress. And we finish the stanza on an ecstatic note: “Di doman’ non c’è certezza.” There is no end to our merriment, over and over again. I slap her on the back, she slaps me on the back in turn, and we return to whatever we have been doing before her poetic outburst. But I can never tell when to expect yet another one.