Charles Bukowski – close to greatness

at one stage in my life
I met a man who claimed to have
visited Pound at St. Elizabeth's.

then I met a woman who not only
claimed to have visited
E.P.
but also to have made love
to him—she even showed
me
certain sections in the
Cantos
where Ezra was supposed to have
mentioned
her.

so there was this man and
this woman
and the woman told me
that Pound had never
mentioned a visit from this
man
and the man claimed that the
lady had had nothing to do
with the
master
that she was a
charlatan

and since I wasn't a
Poundian scholar
I didn't know who to
believe
but one thing I do
know: when a man is
living
many claim relationships
that are hardly
so
and after he dies, well,
then it's everybody's
party.

my guess is that Pound
knew neither the lady or the
gentleman

or if he knew
one
or if he knew
both

it was a shameful waste of
madhouse
time.

George Gordon Byron – The Tear

When Friendship or Love

Our sympathies move;

When Truth, in a glance, should appear,

The lips may beguile,

With a dimple or smile,

But the test of affection's a Tear:

Too oft is a smile

But the hypocrite's wile,

To mask detestation, or fear;

Give me the soft sigh,

Whilst the soultelling eye

Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear:

Mild Charity's glow,

To us mortals below,

Shows the soul from barbarity clear;

Compassion will melt,

Where this virtue is felt,

And its dew is diffused in a Tear:

The man, doom'd to sail

With the blast of the gale,

Through billows Atlantic to steer,

As he bends o'er the wave

Which may soon be his grave,

The green sparkles bright with a Tear;

The Soldier braves death

For a fanciful wreath

In Glory's romantic career;

But he raises the foe

When in battle laid low,

And bathes every wound with a Tear.

If, with high-bounding pride,

He return to his bride!

Renouncing the gore-crimson'd spear;

All his toils are repaid

When, embracing the maid,

From her eyelid he kisses the Tear.

Sweet scene of my youth!

Seat of Friendship and Truth,

Where Love chas'd each fast-fleeting year

Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd,

For a last look I turn'd,

But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear:

Though my vows I can pour,

To my Mary no more,

My Mary, to Love once so dear,

In the shade of her bow'r,

I remember the hour,

She rewarded those vows with a Tear.

By another possest,

May she live ever blest!

Her name still my heart must revere:

With a sigh I resign,

What I once thought was mine,

And forgive her deceit with a Tear.

Ye friends of my heart,

Ere from you I depart,

This hope to my breast is most near:

If again we shall meet,

In this rural retreat,

May we meet, as we part, with a Tear.

When my soul wings her flight

To the regions of night,

And my corse shall recline on its bier;

As ye pass by the tomb,

Where my ashes consume,

Oh! moisten their dust with a Tear.

Emily Dickinson – Much Madness is divinest Sense (Poem 620)

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

Wilfred Owen – At a Calvary Near the Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate

Wilfred Owen – Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

I, too, saw God through mud--
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there--
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear--
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear,
Past the entanglement where hopes lie strewn;

And witnessed exhultation--
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour, though they were foul.

I have made fellowships--
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long.

By joy, whose ribbon slips,--
But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but a trembling of a flare
And heaven but a highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.