READING EZRA POUND

I was reading Ezra Pound walking

to the bus stop from home, through

a road growing over with forest healing

itself from that old human mark

driven through it. The forest leaned

over me as I walked, read Pound's

youthful Provencal poetry with some

reservation, seeking signs of his

coming Fascism. Perhaps it was

simply the rejection of the modern

world, this adulation of a past

mostly imagined, that was the sign.

Or the forcing of his own vision

over the realities of the past,

of the modern world. The idea

that he could reject and enforce, in

words. It was not a long walk,

I came from the trees and climbed

the small hill to the highway,

walked down to the crossroads

where the bus stop awaited, stood

in the hot sun amid green fields.

If only we could use magic scissors

and cut these poets' prime, before

they went foul, and lift it separate,

separate from those radio broadcasts,

the dusk years in Venice visited

by petty Fascist adorers.

25.06.2024

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