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

260 Olga Triumphant
national television station, and his wife; Christopher and Mary Cooley;
Signor Puccelli from Rapallo; Dottoressa Zaira Amman Semenza.
Gianfranco Ivancich had gone early in the morning on November 2 to
choose a burial site for Pound in the evangelical section of the cemetery of
San Michele dell’Isola, in the north lagoon close by the graves of two other
cultural giants of the century, Igor Stravinsky and Serge Diaghilev.
‘‘Ezra Pound wished to be buried in Idaho,’’ Olga noted, ‘‘in view of the
Sawtooth Range. He had made known in writing to his Committee in
1967, [but] legally he was not free to manage his a√airs. ‘Venice or Rapallo,
wherever I happen to be, she knows my wishes’—he left the arrangements
to me.’’
A black, gilt-edged gondola, gondoliers dressed in white, a co≈n covered
with a blanket of wreaths from Venice and Sant’Ambrogio—there
were no flowers in the church—left the mooring of San Giorgio. Olga
whispered a line from The Cantos: ‘‘For the gondolas cost too much that
year,’’ recalling Ezra’s early days in Venice.
From a room on the Riva degli Schiavoni, overlooking ‘‘the far-shining
lagoon,’’ Henry James described ‘‘the faint shimmering airy watery pink;
the bright sea light seems to flush with it, and the pale whitish green of
[the] lagoon and canal to drink it up.’’ Olga saw San Michele as ‘‘a place of
unlopped trees, of birds: ‘not of one bird, but of many . . .’ ’’ She recalled that
young Ezra, newly arrived in Venice, had been inspired by a painting—
Processione a San Michele—to write a poem, ‘‘For Italico Brass,’’ dedicated
to its artist.
From boat to boat, the bridge makes long its strand
And from death’s isle, they on returning way
As shadows blotted out against far cloud
Hasten for folly or with sloth delay.
When thou knowest all that these hues strove to say
Then shalt thou know the pain that eats my heart
Some see but color and commanding sway
Of shore line, bridge line, or how are composed
The white of sheep clouds in the wolf of storm