Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

245 The Last Ten Years
The next morning, Olga flew to her birthplace, Youngstown, Ohio, to
inspect the property left in her father’s estate. A parking lot occupied the
site of the Rudge family home on Bryson Street. After discussing the
situation with Richard Hammond and an o≈cer at the bank, she created a
trust, with Hammond, an old family friend, as trustee. She was delighted
to meet her two young cousins (one, a nun in a teaching order). She
hurried back to New York the same evening. Walter and his grandfather
had been in all day; Ezra refused to eat, fearing that Olga would never
come back. But the next morning he was up early to go with Walter to the
Hans Arp exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum. On the last evening, Mary
Hemingway, Ernest’s widow, treated them to dinner at four-star Voisin.
Back in Venice, the house was being repainted, so Olga escaped with
Ezra to Rome for the Fourth of July celebration. She recorded another
significant dream.
Ezra: ‘‘It was on the 4th of July that I hurt myself climbing over a picket
fence. I scraped the skin in the crotch—didn’t hurt my balls.’’
Olga: ‘‘How old were you?’’
Ezra: ‘‘Oh, eight or nine.’’
Olga: ‘‘I thought it was your father . . . ?’’
Ezra: ‘‘Yes, I don’t know how old he was, a small boy, swinging on a
swing and the rope broke. That’s when he got that cut, you could put your
hand into his side that far, lost one testicle—never could do athletics.’’
Olga: ‘‘Was he always telling you to take care?’’
Ezra: ‘‘No!’’
Olga: ‘‘Your mother?’’
Ezra: ‘‘She never mentioned the subject at all.’’
A few days later they were in Spoleto. They found ‘‘all serene’’ at the
Menotti palazzo. As in seasons past, the Festival of Two Worlds was a time
of reunion with old friends: Simonetta Lippi, Buckminster Fuller and his
wife Ann, Sally Fitzgerald and Stephen Spender’s daughter, Isamu Noguchi
and Willem de Kooning. Anthony Hecht wrote, and read, a poem
dedicated to Ezra. When Ezra was invited to choose one of his own poems
to read, he was so depressed Olga feared he could not go on with it. She
got him onto the stage, where he sat quietly with six others—and at last,
read. Listening from the box, Olga pronounced it ‘‘Magnificent!’’ They