EZRA POUND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24814, 2 March 1946, Page 5

EZRA POUND

You are very idle, my songs. I fear you will come to a bad end. Ezra Pound, “Lustra” (1915). It Is, and is not, I am sane enough, Since you have come, this place has hovered round me. This fabrication built of autumn roses, Then there’s a goldish colour, different. . . . —Ezra Pound, “Ripostes” (1912). Ezra, the game is up; all up, poor Pound, Short weight, deranged. Poising a case for treason, The law’s contempt, not pity, weighed and found Your state unfit, wanting both rhyme and reason. You whose amusement was “the public taste,” Messer Pound, what have we to do with you? How is the “strange rare name” you boasted based? Greek howlers in your verse, translations too Held suspect, came to judgment long before. A few sad insolent lines escape this 'doom, "Goldish weft.” mutterings behind the door Of Smart in Bedlam, Hoelderlin’s high room. —A flattery, that, after your own vain heart! “Yet I am a poet”—there let judgment start. ALLEN CURNOW.