Classic Poem

The small Alps, the frilled, puritanical
collars of snow, melting in the sun of Italy —

heroes drift here: they kill for high ground,
grow lazy and forgetful, then give the land away ...

This hamlet, Merano, belongs to Italy

for now, but in its Prussian piazza stands
the bust of Maria Theresa, pragmatic

lady-King of Hungary, and Austrians
squeeze inside the gingerbread beer

and pasta houses, burbling Italian to waiters
who click back perfect German —

Everyone here is exiled, or prays that
beer is oxygen, and that the starched,

health spa fräulein will walk the cobbles
of your spine ...

Wander upstream, walk against its time,
find the true hamlet of Tirol,

where the ageless, drindled Mary, princess
de Rachewiltz, sprints the castle stairs

to serve high tea, and talk of Pound her father:
" Pound loved all people , " she breathes,

and kisses her guest hotly.

His walking stick and hat pose downstairs;
the castle's " Agrarian Technology " exhibit

awaits the fall of capitalism; the ox-eyed
girls of Appalachia College (study abroad)

stretch for the castle's champagne grapes,
or play hacky sack in short-shorts ...

O to be a grape underfoot —

even Kafka, scowling like Bogart,
came to Merano once, for the waters :

giddy, he pranced through
the Hotel Palace Schloss Maur ,

writing Hamlet backward, Tel Mah , tell
Queen Gertrude: the one-act play with no revenge...

The girls' skin is browned butter,
unmarked, unreadable;

where are the rashes? —

Pound had shipped Mary maple saplings
to spark industry in maple syrup,

" you'll make a killing " —
the tree-boxes also hid sprouts of

poison ivy, which spread like locusts
through the Alps. But now no rash.

The eye sees what it remembers,
the imagination dreams its rut

is fresh, not tragical-comical-historical ...
who, pocketing the chilly grapes, would not

name himself king here,
and forget who is king?