Flamboyant

(Remembering Ezra Pound)

He always reached beyond his grasp
To read the haikus others counted
Merely. If they would only ask
Him, of course, at the proper time
He would tell them what they meant.

Then a lowly master said
His bamboo words were rather brittle.
Soft presence was the key.
White nothing
Needed more than craft,
More than Paris metro,
More than alphabet.

At first he was offended.
So with a finger pointed
West, he went to Italy
To discover something else
Which, of course, he did
And began to smear himself,
Although he felt anointed.

Later in a traitor cage
The occupying army made
He cursed transistor radios,
But in those lucid moments
He liked that piss ant cage
Where he wrote more cantos
Waiting for a prison fate,
Since everyone would notice
Ezra in the Pisan sun,
Making jurisprudence
And perhaps the hangman wait.