To Pantheon and Back

I

Lower your head,
Ezra Pound;
methinks you’ve
been too proud.
Lend your ear,
and I’ll speak profound
words to explain
your odyssey
from Mauberley
to Italy;
from writing poetry
to goose stepping foreign terrain.
I have spent a year or so
to forge some pact
with you—
.......Poetry, please transcend
.......the lies of the poets’ lives.
.......Leave behind
.......the Paris underground
.......seen through topaz eyes.


II

Were this a wasteland,
I’d offer Eliot my hand,
walk with him
across Margate sand
and, with a Cheshire grin,
ask him to answer on demand:
“Why have we not
developed into friends?”—
and whilst the seaside dreamland
would claim to be welcoming,
the doubting Thomas beside me
would soon be wearing thin,
and the concrete boulevard turned depressing—
I could not wait for the train
as it kept coming,
derailing whilst approaching.


III

J.P.V, Imagiste?
In closer truth—
cut and paste-collage artiste;
patch-work quilt poet,
cross-stitch storyteller,
stitching together guilt and
the limping legs of
a fractured, beaten sonnet
that is to be read by
some smiling lady
with a straw-hat bonnet,
and then filed in her purse,
as she joins the sails
of a caravan of barges,
where—if all else fails—she
can read her heinous charges
from cross-referenced verse.
Would she know of whom I spoke
.......if I sat in the gazebo
.......forming blackbirds
.......out of cigar smoke?


IV

It feels crowded in my head.
I seem haunted by what I’ve read.
The house of Usher is filled
with too many guests
that declined to announce their name.
So I make my way
across the bridge, courteously,
and announce myself as Hart Crane:
.......“LET ME IN!
.......I am Whitman,
.......I am Marlowe,
.......I am Christ!”
Take to heart the words
just said—
they were spoken to me,
and I was taken by their spite,
like the cinematic silent clown
who received his first lines to recite.
.......What rough beast slouches in
.......to serve champagne to the guests
.......in my mind tonight?


V

“Are the antennas reaching for the sky
to beam over the sun
after the bellows blow out
the candle light?”

.......“Are the furnaces ripe
.......to sprout winged tigers
.......to loom over the swiftly
.......cemented construction site?”

“Is the pillow in the oven
ready to tell sleepy stories
of the seedy city night-life?”

.......“Are the bomber planes still dropping stones
.......on the streets
.......whilst flying at shoulder height?”

as these noises will not leave,
I take the names this eve,
and command myself to celebrate
the verses that gather to carry some weight,
and walk to Paris, bearing a snowflake,
and march on Pantheon—
I hear it’s mine to take.

Take me, my myriad guests!
Carry me where legends rest—
Take the proud eagle I calmly detest.
Take this coat of alms I poorly undressed.
Take leave for eternity, take the
verses I’ve read!
.......“Take all!
.......drag off that trusted, rusted Remington.
.......Leave me a pen and the sunburnt hand
.......of this son of man as my needle and thread.
.......Now, hunch your back—
.......I need a table to write.”

Crawl up the steps to Pantheon,
and watch the falcon
take flight.

By JPV

Copyright September 2006