Poems 1918-21. Ezra Pound
in what hall have you heard it;
What foot beat out your time-bar, what water has mellowed your whistles?
Out-weariers of Apollo will, as we know, continue their Martian generalities.
We have kept our erasers in order,
A new-fangled chariot follows the flower-hung horses;
A young Muse with young loves clustered about her
ascends with me into the aether, …
And there is no high-road to the Muses.
Annalists will continue to record Roman reputations,
Celebrities from the Trans-Caucasus will belaud Roman celebrities
And expound the distentions of Empire,
But for something to read in normal circumstances?
For a few pages brought down from the forked hill unsullied?
I ask a wreath which will not crush my head.
And there is no hurry about it;
I shall have, doubtless, a boom after my funeral,
Seeing that long standing increases all things regardless of quality.
And who would have known the towers
pulled down by a deal-wood horse;
Or of Achilles withstaying waters by Simois
Or of Hector spattering wheel-rims,
Or of Polydmantus, by Scamander, or Helenus and Deiphoibos?
Their door-yards would scarcely know them, or Paris.
Small talk O Ilion, and O Troad
twice taken by Oetian gods,
If Homer had not stated your case!
And I also among the later nephews of this city
shall have my dog’s day
With no stone upon my contemptible sepulchre,
My vote coming from the temple of Phoebus in Lycia, at Patara,
And in the mean time my songs will travel,
And the devirginated young ladies will enjoy them
when they have got over the strangeness,
For Orpheus tamed the wild beasts—
and held up the Threician river;
And Citharaon shook up the rocks by Thebes and danced them into a bulwark at his pleasure,
And you, O Polyphemus? Did harsh Galatea almost
Turn to your dripping horses, because of a tune, under Aetna?
We must look into the matter.
Bacchus and Apollo in favour of it,
There will be a crowd of young women doing homage to my palaver,
Though my house is not propped up by Taenarian columns from Laconia
(associated with Neptune and Cerberus),
Though it is not stretched upon gilded beams;
My orchards do not lie level and wide
as the forests of Phaecia,
the luxurious and Ionian,
Nor are my caverns stuffed stiff with a Marcian vintage,
(My cellar does not date from Numa Pompilius,
Nor bristle with wine jars)
Yet the companions of the Muses
will keep their collective nose in my books,
And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
Happy who are mentioned in my pamphlets, the songs shall be a fine tomb-stone over their beauty.
But against this?
Neither expensive pyramids scraping the stars in their route,
Nor houses modelled upon that of Jove in East Elis,
Nor the monumental effigies of Mausolus,
are a complete elucidation of death.
Flame burns, rain sinks into the cracks
And they all go to rack ruin beneath the thud of the years.
Stands genius a deathless adornment,
a name not to be worn out with the years.
II
I had been seen in the shade, recumbent on cushioned Helicon,
the water dripping from Bellerophon’s horse,
Alba, your kings, and the realm your folk
have constructed with such industry
Shall be yawned out on my lyre—with such industry.
My little mouth shall gobble in such great fountains,
“Wherefrom father Ennius, sitting before I came, hath drunk.”
I had rehearsed the Curian brothers, and made remarks on the Horatian javelin
(Near Q. H. Flaccus’ book-stall).
“Of” royal Aemilia, drawn on the memorial raft,
“Of” the victorious delay of Fabius, and the left-handed
battle at Cannae,
Of lares fleeing the “Roman seat” …
I had sung of all these
And of Hannibal,
and of Jove protected by geese.
And Phoebus looking upon me from the Castalian tree,
Said then “You idiot! What are you doing with that water;
“Who has ordered a book about heroes?
You need, Propertius, not think
“About acquiring that sort of a reputation.
“Soft fields must be worn by small wheels,
“Your pamphlets will be thrown, thrown often into a chair
“Where a girl waits alone for her lover;
“Why wrench your page out of its course?
“No keel will sink with your genius
“Let another oar churn the water,
“Another wheel, the arena; mid-crowd is as bad as mid-sea.”
He had spoken, and pointed me a place with his plectrum:
Orgies of vintages, an earthern image of Silenus
Strengthened with rushes, Tegaean Pan,
The small birds of the Cytharean mother,
their Punic faces dyed in the Gorgon’s lake;
Nine girls, from as many countrysides
bearing her offerings in their unhardened hands,
Such my cohort and setting. And she bound ivy to his thyrsos;
Fitted song to the strings;
Roses twined in her hands.
And one among them looked at me with face offended,
Calliope:
“Content ever to move with white swans!
“Nor will the noise of high horses lead you ever to battle;
“Nor will the public criers ever have your name
in their classic horns,
“Nor Mars