Cover & Book design: Jack Ross(May) Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old”. Trans. Jack Ross. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997. [ii] + 42 pp. [25 numbered copies].
- [Ezra Pound]: Canto LXXII: Presences (25/7/91-5/97)
- [Ezra Pound]: Canto LXXIII: Cavalcanti / Republican Dispatches (25/7/91-5/97)
- [Arthur Rimbaud]: Poets at Seven Years Old (7/91-18/5/97)
"rain also is of the process
What you depart from is not the way"
- Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos (1949)
As soon as we start to remember this shitty war
Certain facts will resurface. In the beginning, God
The great aesthete, having created the heaven and the earth,
Volcanic red sunsets, having decked out the rock
With lichens – like a Japanese print –
Shat out the great usurer Satana-Gerione, the prototype
Of Churchill’s bosses. And now it is my turn to sing
In a half-savage cant (not the true (t)’oscano), because
Filippo Tomaso came to me, post-death, saying:
“Bene, I’m dead,
But I don’t want to go in Paradiso, I want to keep fighting.
I want your body, so I can keep fighting.”
And I replied: “Tomaso, my body’s too old,
And anyway, where would I go? I still need it.
I’ll give you a spot in my Canto, I’ll give you the mike;
But if you just want to fight, scram – get hold of some kid;
Gedda holda some keed – some dumb scaredy-cat
And lend him some balls (not to mention some brains)
... As if Italia needed one more bloody hero!
That way you’re reborn – a ravening beast –
You have a Renaissance, then die one more time.
Don’t die in bed, viejo,
But to the sound of trumpets
– That way Paradiso!
Purgatorio you’ve suffered
After the Surrender, the twenty-first of September,
Ze dyes of Betrayal!
Scram – go make yourself a hero,
Leave the talking to me.
Leave the explaining to me,
Leave me to sing of the battle eternal
Between the filth and the light.
Addio, Marinetti!
Drop in when you’re free.”
“Atten-SHUN”
And, after the barked command, he added sadly:
“I wasted my time in futile folly,
Loved show more than substance,
Ignored the ancients - nor did I study
Confucius or Mencius.
I praised war, you wanted peace
Blindmen both!
though I was hollow, you hated the now.”
Only in part
Was he speaking to me – nor from nearby –
A part of him seemed to be quizzing himself
Without touching centre; and so his shadow
Shaded off into grey
Until from another turn of the dial
A voice issued from the hollow receiver:
“Vomon le nari spiriti di fiamma.”
Quoth I:
“Torquato Dazzi, is’t that chloroform in verse
you’ve come here to peddle –
‘Nostrils spewing flame’ – translated 20 yrs back to wake up Mussato?
Marinetti and you – a great double-act
Both over the top, he for the future
And you for the past.
Too often over-affection
Creates over-kill – all that damn’d blasting;
By now there’s enough ruins even for him!”
Again that hasty and impatient spirit
Like a messenger who’s chafing at delay
And will not stay for business of less merit
Burst in – I recognised the voice of Marinetti
Heard long ago in Piazza Adriana, down by Tiber-side.
“Come back!
At Macallè, the Gobi’s farthest bound
A skull lies bleaching in the desert sand
& SINGS
Tireless, strident, sings, & sings, & sings:
– Alamein! Alamein!
We shall return!
We shall return! –”
Me: “I believe you”
... Enough, I hope, to give his soul some peace.
The other spirit resumed his own refrain
With:
“poco minor d’un toro” ...
(a line translated from the Eccerinus;
Latin: “little less than ... bull”).
He did not cap
The quote.
For all the air was trembling, and the shade
Wavered
And, as with sounds drowned out by driving rain,
Flung phrases without sense. Just like a ship
Whose sunken hull caves in when touched by light,
I heard a rattling sigh
Of discharged breath (or on a sick-
Bed, when a man’s about to die):
“Guelph slanderers! Their weapon was it ever –
Calumny ... still is; world without end.
The age-old war’s still raging in Romagna,
Filth risen to Bologna
With looting and rapine – See horses stand
In darkies fetlock-deep as in a river,
Moroccans and such scum
Enough to rouse the bones beneath the fields
To breathe, clench fists, salute, come
Back to life, armed shaft & shield
Against the foe.
I’ve seen such dirt-bags often in my time –
Look through the books, you’ll find them there in droves
Betrayers of a province or a city
But this microbe
The Empire sold, as well as Italy!
Forlì in flames & Rimini forsaken;
Who shall again frequent Gemisto’s shrine
(A wise man surely, even if a Grecian)?
The walls on fire, the arches all are fallen
In Ixotta’s pied-à-terre – goddess & queen ...”
“Who’s there?” I cried
Clamouring to be heard above the storm,
“Is it Sigismundo?”
He did not listen, but
Raved on:
“Sooner the Seat of Peter will be clean
Of a Borgia papa than of a Pacelli.
Sixtus, too, was a son of usury
– The whole conspiracy
Of those who’ve grown so fat on scribbled deeds
Aimed to deny him worthy followers;
So now they’re bellowing that Farinacci
Has dirty hands, because he caught on quick.
One hand is dirty, but the other one
Has earned him pride of place among our many
Unsung heroes: Tellera, Maletti,
Miele, de Carolis & Lorenzini,
Guido Piacenza, Orsi & Predieri,
Volpini, Baldassare, Borsarelli,
To give you just the names of the commanders.
Clement was a banker’s brat - a son
Of usury il Decimo Leone ...”
“Who’s there?” I cried.
“I am that Ez-zelino who would not credit
The universe was created by a Jew.
No doubt I was guilty of other errors, too –
let’s just forget that
Now. Your friend & I were scammed
By the same man: ol’ Muss,
Who told me I was damned
As ‘Satan’s son’ (try swallowing that
& you’ll not need carrots to turn into an ass).
Adonis was disembowelled by a boar
Simply to make the Cyprian goddess cry.
It’s tempting to make a joke of it & say
A prize bull from the zoo or abattoir’s
Worth more, because he weighs more than a pig
(Students of Aesop’s Fables will complain
That animals can’t do arithmetic).
More harm’s been done by one false load of bull
Than all my tricks: a fig, a bagatelle!
Dig that fat ferret out of his warm lair
& see if he don’t say:
‘The bête humaine rejoices in its chains’?
If ever an Emperor sent forth that decree
Byzantium had defiled the parent stream;
His Virtue had ebbed into a parody
Of law, divided from the golden mean.
Caesar sapped not his own integrity,
Augustus, before Peter, built in stone
(The rock sustained the same authority).
‘The lawgiver is law’s custodian’
– Fought for in Florence by the ghibelline.”
Like waves that come from more than one transmitter,
The rippling voices
Fused (in broken phrases), and I heard
A skein of birds who sang in counterpoint
As in a garden
on a summer’s day,
‘Mongst whom, most softly:
“Placidia fui, sotto l’oro dormivo.”
“I, Placidia, sleeping under gold” – rang from a well-tuned string.
“Malinconia di donna e la dolcezza” ...
I began
“Sorrows and sweets of ladies;” but I felt
Goose-pimples rising,
pulse was racing
Like an engine,
arm and shoulder seized
As if by force: that is, I saw a hand
Had gripped me,
yet I could not see the arm
Pinning me like a thumb-tack to the wall
(You won’t believe me – who cares? You weren’t there).
And then the one who raged at me before
Cut in – I say ‘cut in’; not rudely, rather
Almost like a father
Explaining to his son the fight they’re in:
“It’s an old man’s prize, & you’re the greenest hand.
Listen to me, before I have to go
Back to the night.
Where the skull sings our soldiers
Will return, those banners will come in.”
(25/7/91-5/97)
Publications:
- Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Trans. Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 2-13.
- Jack Ross. "Poetry Live & Ezra Pound." The Imaginary Museum (31/3/2007) [available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2007/03/poetry-live.html].
Notes:
- A full set of annotations can be found in my chapbook Pound's Fascist Cantos (2007): 24-30. An updated version of these is available online at https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2007/03/poetry-live.html.
And then I slept
And, waking in the wasted air,
Saw and heard thus –
He whom I saw seemed like a cavalier,
And I heard this:
“Watching my people die
Does not satisfy
even if they broke their word,
Even if they deserve
to be governed by King Turd.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Eden
bastards to a man,
Liar, Jew and glutton
have squeezed the people dry
like sheep!
At Sarzana I lay still,
waiting for the call
from sleep
I am Guido, whom you loved
as a spirit from above
And for the burning-glass of my mind's reason.
I knew the cleansing fire
Of Venus's third sphere
already as I rode
Cavalcanti, the cavalier
(Not a mere follower)
through the squabbling streets
Of our città dolente
(Firenze)
which breeds
Not men, but a vain and touchy
race of slaves!
Passing through Arimino
I met a gallant soul
Singing as though her heart would break
with joy!
A young contadinella
– Big-boned girl, but bella –
with a German on each arm;
And she sang,
she sang of love
without thought of
heaven above.
She had led some Canadians
into a field of mines
Where the Tempio of Ixotta
used to stand.
They were coming in fours and fives
– I felt a wave of passion
steal over me again
as if I were still alive.
That's the way girls are
in the Romagna.
The Canadians had come
to 'mop up' German scum,
To pull down the remains
of Rimini;
They stopped to ask the way
to the Via Emilia
of a girl,
a poor young girl
Raped by the first of that canaille.
– Be'! Bene! soldiers,
follow me.
Let's all go together
to Via Emilia! –
She showed them – where to go.
Her brother had dug the holes
For that mine-field,
there beside the sea-side.
Towards the sea-side, she
(big-boned, but a beauty)
Led the boys.
Brave kid! A real cutie!
She played that prank
for love:
acing 'em all for poise!
Death-threats arrived too late,
Defying Fate
she died –
That big-boned girl –
with pride,
hitting the target straight!
To hell with the enemy!
Twenty of them lay dead
The girl dead, too
in the midst of that canaille.
Everyone except the prisoners.
A real hard-case
that kid
Singing, singing
with joy
Along the road that leads
beside the sea.
Gloria della patria!
Gloria! the glory
Of dying for one's land
in the Romagna!
The dead are not all dead,
Myself I have returned
from the third sphere
to see Romagna,
To see the North reborn
among the mountains,
In this 'morte saison'
to see the home-land,
And yet – that girl ...
what girls,
what boys
wear black!”
(25/7/91-5/97)
Publications:
- Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Trans. Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 14-19.
- Jack Ross. "Pound's Fascist Cantos Revisited." Ka Mate Ka Ora 3 (2007): 41-57. [available at: https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/03/ka_mate03_ross.asp].
Notes:
- A full set of annotations can be found in my chapbook Pound's Fascist Cantos (2007): 31-32. An updated version of these is available online at https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/03/ka_mate03_ross.asp, with updates in the form of a correspondence with distinguished Pound Scholar Professor Massimo Bacigalupo at https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/04/ka_mate04_correspondence.asp.
•
- Arthur Rimbaud: "Les Poètes de sept ans" [26/5/1871]
- Poets at Seven Years Old
(7/91-18/5/97)
Publications:
- Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Trans. Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 20-23.
- Poetry NZ 16 (1998): 65.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Arthur Rimbaud, “Les Poètes de sept ans” (1871). Text from Œuvres, ed. Suzanne Bernard (Paris: Garnier, 1975) 95-97.
•
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