Why to Keep Ezra Pound at Bay

This is less about immaculate

Emotion than might be imagined;

This is less about imagined

Emotion than might be immaculate;

Where shadow sounds silence, and light

Sights a touch, to speed

Exercise at restricting emotion

(pome for pome’s sake, circa 1916, depressed),

Become a lesser effort which Homer,

Forgiving to London, and to the boy

It held, casting a big net – every word

The nut of genius – even Homer P. looks

Upon an askewed eye wondering where

Circe or Cadmus would play:

Where are the fauns supposed to romp?

To clarify a point, fauns do not always

Have to romp, per se, okay? and between

You and I, the three walls here, and a very

Broad established proscenium, I would

Not know a romping faun from a languishing faun,

I would not be 100% clear

What it is exactly fauns do actually.

What? romp? play the pipes? cavort? some

Times chase various –ads – dry-‘s, and neri-‘s

And Nai-‘s, maybe myri-‘s?  Hardly thesis

Or treatise material.  Certainly not the basis

For a poem.  Or pome, as Ez has it when

He dreams of tone or Rome.  The little nits

Go bouncing around the chroniclers of Elysia

As if they couldn’t be stepped on, or flattened

By Apollo or Hermes at any step.

Let’s:  describe these flea-smitten fellows.

Not unlike our no-seeums, they’re mere milli-

Meters in height, no girth at all,

They hide in the most awkward

Places:  waistbands, shirt collars, mohawks,

Unsuspecting sheets.  Where they bite

There, where there be no grief

© 2012 Mark A. Douglas.  All rights reserved.