Caro Erminia - I'm sorry you never read my poems; you might enjoy them.
I myself quite enjoy your egotism, and these hissyfits ... one recalls
the remark Mussolini made, which Pound so treasured, when Pound gave him
a copy of the early Cantos - "Ma questa, e divertente!" Of course,
you're running afoul of the dread Bircumshaw, which is unwise given his
ultra-sophisticated and worldly moral sense ("Two wrongs don't make a
right," "Thou shalt not kill" etc.); possibly he'll find some way to
brand you too a racist. Meanwhile, two things: I'm still desperately
eager to learn what "naff" means - I'm sure a definition would give me
new insight on my work; and: here's a new, highly political poem.
Things Themselves
*If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.*
- Wittgenstein
If a lion could talk, we would understand him:
he would talk about hyenas.
In a space defined, as space is, by a kill,
he eats, then his pride eats, from a carcass,
and a pack of hyenas circles and darts in,
chuckling. The lion's wives
eat - he has left rather little -
and feed their cubs, and try to chase away
hyenas. But they can't chase them far,
because others would rush in and eat the cubs.
So the wives run back and forth,
occasionally resting, though
there really is no rest. And Himself needs
rest, for he
has eaten; but the hyenas,
the mad young males run
(perhaps as a diversion), chuckling,
at him. So on occasion
he runs a hundred yards and breaks
a spine with one swipe - as he
would certainly recount. A lioness could tell
how she killed the matriarch of a pack, gaining
a whole night's peace,
but probably the lion would do the talking.
By day, all this occurs in rank haze.
At night, the hyenas' eyes reflect starlight.
|