I <br />Turned from the 'eau-forte <br />Par Jaquemart' <br />To the strait head <br />Of Messalina: <br /> <br />'His true Penelope <br />Was Flaubert,' <br />And his tool <br />The engraver's. <br /> <br />Firmness, <br />Not the full smile, <br />His art, but an art <br />In profile; <br /> <br />Colourless <br />Pier Francesca, <br />Pisanello lacking the skill <br />To forge Achaia. <br /> <br />II <br />For three years, diabolus in the scale, <br />He drank ambrosia, <br />All passes, ANANGKE prevails, <br />Came end, at last, to that Arcadia. <br /> <br />He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, <br />Amid her galaxies, <br />NUKTIS 'AGALMA <br /> <br />Drifted . . . drifted precipitate, <br />Asking time to be rid of ... <br />Of his bewilderment; to designate <br />His new found orchid. . . . <br /> <br />To be certain . . . certain . . . <br />(Amid aerial flowers) . . . time for arrangements- <br />Drifted on <br />To the final estrangement; <br /> <br />Unable in the supervening blankness <br />To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff <br />Until he found his sieve . . . <br />Ultimately, his seismograph: <br /> <br />Given that is his 'fundamental passion', <br />This urge to convey the relation <br />Of eye-lid and cheek-bone <br />By verbal manifestations; <br />To present the series <br />Of curious heads in medallion <br /> <br />He had passed, inconscient, full gaze, <br />The wide-branded irides <br />And botticellian sprays implied <br />In their diastasis; <br /> <br />Which ansethesis, noted a year late, <br />And weighed, revealed his great affect, <br />(Orchid), mandate <br />Of Eros, a retrospect. <br /> <br />Mouths biting empty air, <br />The still stone dogs, <br />Caught in metamorphosis, were <br />Left him as epilogues.<br /><br />Ezra Pound<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mauberley/
