The American Poet Ezra Pound Recommends Peanut-Butter to His Italian Friends

by Bruce Whiteman

“The true idea leads to grain and groundnuts.” Ezra Pound, 1941

The fading late October sun
illuminates a barely tree. Polychrome
leaves are everywhere, crowds
in corners, tidal waves falling

over battered houses, lonely
singles accidentally powered
into halls and foyers, dragged
underfoot to who knows where,

gone. The sun will soon be gone
as well, as darkening cold moves in,
winter and its grim psychosis.
On an ancient August afternoon

it seemed far–fetched, like Ezra pushing
peanut–butter on his friends in Rome
and elsewhere, hoarfrost on a
bathroom window, snow in a gulch

where animals go to die, abundant.
It passes belief but is no joke.
Stubble in the fields and rumbustious
squirrels and the wretchedness to come.