Nicotine
Goddess of the murmuring courts,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Houri of the mystic sports,
trailing-robed in gabardine,
Gliding where the breath hath glided,
Hidden sylph of filmy veils,
Truth behind the dream is veiléd
E'en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding,
Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing
Purple, grey, and shadow green
Goddess, Dream-grace, Nicotine.
Goddess of the shadow's lights,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Some would set old Earth to rights,
Thou I none such ween.
Veils of shade our dream dividing,
Houris dancing, intergliding,
Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces,
Silent guardian of the old unhallowed places,
Utter symbol of all old sweet druidings,
Mem'ry of witched wold and green,
Nicotine, my Nicotine:
Neath the shadows of thy weaving
Dreams that need no undeceiving,
Loves that longer hold me not,
Dreams I dream not any more,
Fragrance of old sweet forgotten places,
Smiles of dream-lit, flit-by faces
All as perfume Arab-sweet
Deck the high road to thy feet
As were Godiva's coming fated
And all the April's blush belated
Were lain before her, carpeting
The stones of Coventry with spring,
So thou my mist-enwreathéd queen,
Nicotine, white Nicotine,
Riding engloried in their hair
Mak'st by-road of our dreams
Thy thorough-fare.
Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972) was indeed an eccentric, self-obsessed, difficult person who died a recluse after finally being released, after many years, from St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Center in Washington. A rebel without a cause. He had been deemed a traitor to the US during WW2. But who knew he was an expert fencer, and W.B. Yeat's fencing coach? Or that he was William Carlos William's college pal at Penn? I didn't. He has always been more influential than read. An "imagist" poet, his definition of the literary image remains the best: "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Bob Dylan learned story-telling from Woody Guthrie, and "imagism" from Rimbaud, Pound, William Carlos Williams,T.S.Eliot, and the old-time bluesmen like Robert Johnson...not putting him in that Pantheon, but he has music, too.
1967 photo from here.