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362 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
" 'You have to hunt the pieces,' he said.
"When Pound was taken during war in Italy, he was put in a
cage, under guard, and had to cover himself with papers.
" 'Few men of letters have those opportunities,' he said yesterday.
"Arriving at St. Elizabeth's—jaunty Pound refers to it as 'St.
Liz'—he was placed in the hospital's violent ward, 'the hell hole.'
" 'I needed a five-year rest cure, and they gave me a fifteen
months' endurance test.'
"He continued to write and publish, but as to reading, he declared,
'I hate it . . . the only excuse to read is to find out
something . . . it's abominable.'
"But he ranged nimbly over modern day writers yesterday from
Yeats, under whom he had studied ('a much better writer than I
am but a gargoyle') to Hemingway whom he taught ('one of the
best').
" 'Hem,' the tough old man said, had sent him 'The Grave of
the Unknown Sailor,' a set of shark's jaws.
"Pound's defense for his wartime broadcasts has been that he
did them as an individual American, on his own, to help the
world, and not for the few lira, about $15, he received.
"As the party broke up yesterday, a reporter leaned over Pound
and asked him if he felt he had been a traitor to his country in
any degree.
"The old man looked up calmly, steadily. 'I certainly do not,'
he said."
The interviewer was impressed by Pound's amazing vitality.
His youthful complexion and vibrant manner often startled newcomers
at the hospital. One visitor described him as creating the
impression of "an old-time seaman, aged but still spry from
climbing the rigging every day, sitting at his ease in a coffee house
or tavern between voyages of exploration or privateering on the
Spanish Main."
This is a remarkably exact description, for Ezra was always a
Captain Morgan, who preyed on the Spanish Main of the intellect.
At the first sight of his sail, the landlubbers would dive for their
cellars, chattering like hens in the shadow of the hawk's wing.