Brodsky on Ezra Pound

They're buried in the same graveyard (took their marble portraits -- but that's down the blogal road), so I'm paying homage to both. Read Eliot on Pound; read Cathay; and recently finished rereading Brodsky's Watermark (a quick read, not as great as I remembered, but the target was out of this world: Venice).

*

From Brodsky's Watermark:

     What woke me from my reverie was the sound of Susan's voice, which meant that the record had come to a stop. There was something odd in her timbre and I cocked my ear. Susan was saying, "But surely, Olga, you don't think that the Americans got cross with Ezra over his broadcasts. Because if it were only his broadcasts, then Ezra would be just another Tokyo Rose." Now, that was one of the greatest returns I had ever heard. I looked at Olga. It must be said that she took it like a mensch. Or, better yet, a pro. Or else she didn't grasp what Susan had said, though I doubt it. "What was it, then?" she inquired. "It was Ezra's anti-Semitism," replied Susan, and I saw the corundum needle of the old lady's finger once again hitting the groove. On this side of the record was: "One should realize that Ezra was not an anti-Semite; that after all his name was Ezra; that some of his friends were Jewish, including one Venetian admiral; that . . ." The tune was equally familiar and equally long -- about three-quarters of an hour; but this time we had to go. We thanked the old lady for the evening and bade her farewell. I, for one, did not feel the sadness one usually feels leaving the house of a widow -- or for that matter anybody alone in an empty place. The old lady was in good shape, reasonably well off; on top of that, she had the comfort of her convictions -- a comfort, I felt, she'd go to any length to defend. I think I'd never met a Fascist -- young or old; however, I'd dealt with a considerable number of old CP members, and that's why tea at Olga Rudge's place, with that bust of Ezra sitting on the floor, rang, so to speak, a bell. We turned to the left of the house and two minutes later found ourselves on the Fondamenta degli Incurabili.