The Poetry of Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound

Thus:

       “The Euphrates denies its protection to the Parthian

       and apologizes for Crassus,”

       And “It is, I think, India which now gives necks to your triumph,”

       And so forth, Augustus. “Virgin Arabia shakes in her inmost dwelling.”

       If any land shrink into a distant seacoast,

       it is a mere postponement of your domination,

       And I shall follow the camp, I shall be duly celebrated,

       for singing the affairs of your cavalry.

       May the fates watch over my day.

      2

      Yet you ask on what account I write so many love-lyrics

       And whence this soft book comes into my mouth.

       Neither Calliope nor Apollo sung these things into my ear,

       My genius is no more than a girl.

      If she with ivory fingers drive a tune through the lyre,

       We look at the process

       How easy the moving fingers; if hair is mussed on her forehead,

       If she goes in a gleam of Cos, in a slither of dyed stuff,

       There is a volume in the matter; if her eyelids sink into sleep,

       There are new jobs for the author,

       And if she plays with me with her shirt off,

       We shall construct many Iliads.

       And whatever she does or says

       We shall spin long yarns out of nothing,

      Thus much the fates have allotted me, and if, Maecenas,

       I were able to lead heroes into armour, I would not,

       Neither would I warble of Titans, nor of Ossa

       spiked onto Olympus,

       Nor of causeways over Pelion,

       Nor of Thebes in its ancient respectability,

       nor of Homer’s reputation in Pergamus,

       Nor of Xerxes’ two-barreled kingdom, nor of Remus and his royal family,

       Nor of dignified Carthaginian characters,

       Nor of Welsh mines and the profit Marus had out of them.

       I should remember Caesar’s affairs …

       for a background,

       Although Callimachus did without them,

       and without Theseus,

       Without an inferno, without Achilles attended of gods,

       Without Ixion, and without the sons of Menoetius and

       the Argo and without Jove’s grave and the Titans.

      And my ventricles do not palpitate to Caesarial ore rotundos, Nor to the tune of the Phrygian fathers.

      Sailor, of winds; a plowman, concerning his oxen;

       Soldier, the enumeration of wounds; the sheep-feeder, of ewes;

       We, in our narrow bed, turning aside from battles:

       Each man where he can, wearing out the day in his manner.

      3

      It is noble to die of love, and honourable to remain

       uncuckolded for a season.

       And she speaks ill of light women,

       and will not praise Homer

       Because Helen’s conduct is “unsuitable.”

      VI

       Table of Contents

      When, when, and whenever death closes our eyelids,

       Moving naked over Acheron

       Upon the one raft, victor and conquered together,

       Marius and Jugurtha together,

       one tangle of shadows.

      Caesar plots against India,

       Tigris and Euphrates shall, from now on, flow at his bidding,

       Tibet shall be full of Roman policemen,

       The Parthians shall get used to our statuary

       and acquire a Roman religion;

       One raft on the veiled flood of Acheron,

       Marius and Jugurtha together.

      Nor at my funeral either will there be any long trail,

       bearing ancestral lares and images;

       No trumpets filled with my emptiness,

       Nor shall it be on an Atalic bed;

       The perfumed cloths shall be absent.

       A small plebeian procession.

       Enough, enough and in plenty

       There will be three books at my obsequies

       Which I take, my not unworthy gift, to Persephone.

      You will follow the bare scarified breast

       Nor will you be weary of calling my name, nor too weary

       To place the last kiss on my lips

       When the Syrian onyx is broken.

      “He who is now vacant dust

       “Was once the slave of one passion:”

       Give that much inscription

       “Death why tardily come?”

      You, sometimes, will lament a lost friend,

       For it is a custom:

       This care for past men,

      Since Adonis was gored in Idalia, and the Cytharean

       Ran crying with out-spread hair,

       In vain, you call back the shade,

       In vain, Cynthia. Vain call to unanswering shadow,

       Small talk comes from small bones.