Ezra Pound won’t knock Anglo-Saxonly,
nor I, in plaid pajamas, let him in
with his bony, graveyard shoulder
coming even with the oak-edge door, wearing
a high-buttoned, worsted herringbone suit
with small, but deeply notched lapels,
and his acid nose pushed close to my face –
Ezra Pound is not going to buttonhole
my plaid pajama top and pull me
close enough to smell the Averna on his breath,
and whisper to me, rolling all his ars,
with wine-dark eyes the words that say,
What a fantastic poem of yours I read;
utterly, utterly, utterly NEW!
And, even if he would so lay it on,
I would not ask The Pound to come inside
for beer in flagons or a new-gnawed bone,
though Ezra Pound is still to me what he
would want to be to me, some sort of god,
the kind of god in charge of just one thing,
like rain, or treason against one’s country,
the kind that has a family of gods--
siblings, aunts and uncles, all severe --
that piss him off or otherwise inspire him
to leave his godly bailiwick in pique
and turn his awesome powers to bad ends.
The crabby kind of god reluctantly
acknowledging the genius of Walt Whitman.
And even if this godlike figure came
to me as I’ve described herein above;
and said what I’ve described herein above,
and the golden nectar of his approval drooled
down past my neck, and in my sleepwear’s collar,
I would not have invited The Pound inside
because his love is not the love I crave,
but rather that a pretty girl would say,
Wow, you’re a poet? That’s so cool; let’s fuck.