Poems 1918-21. Ezra Pound
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Nor where Rome ruins German riches,
“Nor where the Rhine flows with barbarous blood,
and flood carries wounded Suevi.
“Obviously crowned lovers at unknown doors,
“Night dogs, the marks of a drunken scurry,
“These are your images, and from you the sorcerizing
of shut-in young ladies,
“The wounding of austere men by chicane.”
Thus Mistress Calliope,
Dabbling her hands in the fount, thus she
Stiffened our face with the backwash of Philetas the Coan.
III
Midnight, and a letter comes to me from our mistress:
Telling me to come to Tibur, At once!!: “Bright tips reach up from twin towers, Anienan spring water falls into flat-spread pools.”
What is to be done about it? Shall I entrust myself to entangled shadows, Where bold hands may do violence to my person?
Yet if I postpone my obedience
because of this respectable terror
I shall be prey to lamentations worse than a nocturnal assailant.
And I shall be in the wrong, and it will last a twelve month, For her hands have no kindness me-ward,
Nor is there anyone to whom lovers are not sacred at midnight
And in the Via Sciro.
If any man would be a lover
he may walk on the Scythian coast,
No barbarism would go to the extent of doing him harm,
The moon will carry his candle,
the stars will point out the stumbles,
Cupid will carry lighted torches before him
and keep mad dogs off his ankles.
Thus all roads are perfectly safe
and at any hour;
Who so indecorous as to shed the pure gore of a suitor? I
Cypris is his cicerone.
What if undertakers follow my track,
such a death is worth dying.
She would bring frankincense and wreaths to my tomb,
She would sit like an ornament on my pyre.
Gods’ aid, let not my bones lie in a public location
with crowds too assiduous in their crossing of it;
For thus are tombs of lovers most desecrated.
May a woody and sequestered place cover me with its foliage
Or may I inter beneath the hummock
of some as yet uncatalogued sand;
At any rate I shall not have my epitaph in a high road.
IV
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION WITH LYGDAMUS
Tell me the truths which you hear of our constant young lady,
Lygdamus,
And may the bought yoke of a mistress lie with
equitable weight on your shoulders;
For I am swelled up with inane pleasurabilities
and deceived by your reference
To things which you think I would like to believe.
No messenger should come wholly empty,
and a slave should fear plausibilities;
Much conversation is as good as having a home.
Out with it, tell it to me, all of it, from the beginning,
I guzzle with outstretched ears.
Thus? She wept into uncombed hair,
And you saw it,
Vast waters flowed from her eyes?
You, you Lygdamus
Saw her stretched on her bed—
it was no glimpse in a mirror;
No gawds on her snowy hands, no orfevrerie,
Sad garment draped on her slender arms.
Her escritoires lay shut by the bed-feet.
Sadness hung over the house, and the desolated female attendants
Were desolated because she had told them her dreams.
She was veiled in the midst of that place,
Damp wooly handkerchiefs were stuffed into her undryable eyes,
And a querulous noise responded to our solicitous reprobations.
For which things you will get a reward from me, Lygdamus?
To say many things is equal to having a home.
And the other woman “has not enticed me
by her pretty manners,
“She has caught me with herbaceous poison,
she twiddles the spiked wheel of a rhombus,
“She stews puffed frogs, snake’s bones, the moulded feathers of screech owls,
“She binds me with ravvles of shrouds.
“Black spiders spin in her bed!
“Let her lovers snore at her in the morning!
“May the gout cramp up her feet!
“Does he like me to sleep here alone, Lygdamus?
“Will he say nasty things at my funeral?”
And you expect me to believe this
after twelve months of discomfort?
V
1
Now if ever it is time to cleanse Helicon;
to lead Emathian horses afield,
And to name over the census of my chiefs in the Roman camp.
If I have not the faculty, “The bare attempt would be praise-worthy.”
“In things of similar magnitude
the mere will to act is sufficient.”
The primitive ages sang Venus,
the last sings of a tumult,
And I also will sing war when this matter of a girl is exhausted.
I with my beak hauled ashore would proceed in a more stately manner,
My Muse is eager to instruct me in a new gamut, or gambetto,
Up, up my soul, from your lowly cantilation,
put on a timely vigour,
Oh august Pierides! Now for a large-mouthed product.