C7465—RODKER

Borso, Carmagnola, the men of craft, *i vitrei*,
Thither, at one time, time after time,
And the waters richer than glass,
Bronze gold, the glaze over the silver,
Dye-pots in the torch-light,
The flash of wave under prows,
And the silver beaks rising and crossing.
Stone trees, white and rose-white in the darkness,
Cypress there by the towers,
Drift under hulls in the night,

‘In the gloom the gold
Gathers the light about it.’

Now supine in burrow, half over-arched bramble,
One eye for the sea, through that peek-hole,
Gray light, with Athene.
Zothar, and her elephants, the gold loin-cloth,
The sistrum, shaken, shaken,
The cohort of her dancers.
And Aletha, by bend of the shore,
with her eyes seaward,
and in her hands sea-wrack
Salt-bright with the foam.
Koré through the bright meadow,
with green-gray dust in the grass:

'For this hour, brother of Circe.'
Arm laid over my shoulder,
Saw the sun for three days, the sun fulvid,
As a lion lift over sand-plain;
and that day,
And for three days, and none after,
Splendour, as the splendour of Hermes.

And shipped thence
to the stone place,
Pale white, over water,

And the white forest of marble, bent bough over bough,
The pleached arbour of stone,
Thither Borso, when they shot the barbed arrow at him,
And Carmagnola, between the two columns,
Sigismundo, after that wreck in Dalmatia,
Sunset like the grasshopper flying.

C7465 RODKER

XVIII

And of Kublai:
'I have told you of that emperor's city in detail
And will tell you of the coining in Cambaluc
that hyght the secret of alchemy:
They take past of the mulberry-tree,
That is a skin between the wood and the bark,
And of this they make paper, and mark it
Half a tornesel, a tornesel, or a half-groat of silver,
Or two groats, or five groats, or ten groats,
Or, for a great sheet, a gold bezant, three bezants,
ten bezants;
And they are written on by officials,
And smeared with the great kahn's seal in vermillion;
And the forgers are punished with death.
And all this costs the Khan nothing,
And so he is rich in this world.
And his postmen go sewed up and sealed up;
Their coats buttoned behind and then sealed,
In this way from the voyage's one end to its other.
And the Indian merchants arriving
Must give up their jewels, and take this money
in paper
(That trade runs, in bezants, to 400,000 the year),
And the nobles must buy their pearls'
—thus Messire Polo; prison at Genoa—
'Of the Emperor.'

'both apollings
enrich'
(S.1.)

There was a boy in Constantinople,
And some Britisher kicked his arse.
'I hate these French,' said Napoleon, aged twelve,
To young Bourrienne, 'I will do them all the harm
that I can.'
In like manner Zenos Metevsky,
And old Biers was out there, a greenhorn,
To sell cannon, and Metevsky found the back door;
And old Biers sold the munitions,
And Metevsky died and was buried, i.e. officially,
And sat in the Yeiner Kafé watching the funeral.
About ten years after this incident,
He owned a fair chunk of Humberms.

'Peace! Picycell' said Mr. Giddings,
'Uni-ver-sal? Not while yew got tew billions ov money.'
Said Mr. Giddings, 'invested in the man-u-facture
Of war machinery. Haow I sold it to Russia—
Well we tuk 'em a new torpedo-boat,
And it was all electric, run it all from a
Little bit uv a keyboard, about like the size ov
A typewriter, and the prince come aboard,
An' wez swud yew like to run her?
And he run damn slam on the breakwater,
And bust off all her front end,
And he was, my gawd, scared out of his panties.
Who wuz again' tew pay fer the damage?
And it was my first trip out fer the company,
And I sez, "yer highness, it is nothing,
We will give yew a new one." And, my Christ!
The company backed me, and did we get a few orders?

So La Marquesa de las Zojas y Hurbara
Used to drive up to Sir Zenos's place
in the Champs Élysée,

And preside at his dinners, and at *las once*
She drove away from the front door, with her footmen
And her coachman in livery, and drove four blocks round
To the back door, and her husband was the son of a bitch,
And Metevsky, 'the well-known philanthropist',
Or 'the well-known financier, better known,'
As the press said, 'as a philanthropist',
Gave—as the Este to Louis Eleventh—
A fine pair of giraffes to the nation,