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EZRA POUND 363
One by one, the slow, heavy galleons of the world's literature
fell beneath his guns, and were plundered to outfit that new vessel,
the Cantos.
Another visitor to St. Elizabeths complained that Ezra had
a "cruel shark's mouth". To me, Ezra was always a Viking, "aged
but still spry", who had many raids ahead of him. Elizabeth
Bishop thought that he looked diabolical; other visitors were surprised
to find that he looked like a genial, retired professor.
When I arrived in Washington in May, 1958, I found Ezra at
Professor J. C. LaDriere's apartment. LaDriere, one of the
faithful visitors to Chestnut Ward, is a scholar, devoted and uncompromising,
a type who has been shunted aside in our universities
to be replaced by flamboyant entrepreneurs from business
and political and military groups—men who invade our institutions
of higher learning in search of temporary status.
I took some more photographs of Pound, and we adjourned to
the Aldo Café for lunch. An acquaintance at the Italian Embassy
had misinformed Ezra that the garden was open, and we took our
pasta in the crowded dining room. We were joined by Marcella
Jackson of Texas, T. D. Horton, and General Curtis. Ezra was in
high spirits, enjoying his first springtime of freedom in thirteen
years.
The next morning, I accompanied Ezra to the National Gallery
of Art, where we visited with Huntingdon Cairns. I left Ezra to
browse through the Mellon collection, the first time he had seen
it, and joined Dorothy Pound for lunch at the Athens Restaurant.
She was obviously relieved that the long years of waiting were
over, and now she was impatient to get back to Italy. The two governments
were still arguing as to when it would be safe for Ezra
to take to the high seas. She found these extra weeks of waiting in
the humid swamp an unforeseen and exasperating "additional
punishment".
We lingered in the pleasant atmosphere long after the other
diners had gone. It seemed hard to believe that it had actually
happened, that Ezra was free. I had given up hope after five years
of effort, in 1954, because I could not find the slightest relaxation
of the government officials' relentless attitude toward him. Now
the happy event seemed to have taken us both unaware. Perhaps