LITMIR.BIZ

      When poets beg acceptance for their lines

      It’s when ephemera and wisdom intertwine

      When dull biography engulfs a poem

      The poet shores his patron with a Proem

      To raise his thought above the dross of life

      Since life intrudes, the Proem is a gloss.

      Déjà vu more or less. Most likely, more

      Should fit you now to hear this song of strife.

      You spent childhood rehearsing the Korean War

      You fucked up in college and picked the wrong major

      And in 66 everyone faked concern for Asia

      It was all more fitting than you thought;

      The staging. When the orders come down

      For the Nam fourth of July as is fitting

      You implored the Muses to fly from their knotting

      You totaled the Chevy out of meanness

      You whined and wondered how to escape this mess

      And Lord who to write to. There should be a Lord

      If there must be a Proem you thought.

      But there was none. Only your drunkard

      Friends your dope fiends and pimps

      Demon lovers and lovers. And girls dumb

      To the morse code from space still arriving

      While Zia suns crackled over the desert,

      You fled through archives in your brain

      Remembering acidulous hash and devotions

      Consecrated by the pain of navigating through wine

      In peaceful East Coasts full of bare bodies

      And icy streets under neon. Now tropical death

      Leaped before you. You wept. Wastefulness when

      The car ran them down. And the orders came down

      As your prophets demanded. Strange FM stations

      And astrological phonecalls hastened to soothe you,

      Saying, “don’t give a damn.” It was time

      To be going. Vancouver or South Viet Nam.

       And Kung said, “Without character you will

       be unable to play on that instrument

       Or to execute the music fit for the Odes.”

      —Ezra Pound, Canto XIII

FIT MUSIC