Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Lustra
April
Nympharum membra disjecta
Three spirits came to me
And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground:
Pale carnage beneath bright mist.

Instead of enjoying April as the philistines of every nationality do with babbling vitality, melting hearts and roaring erections, Pound’s lyrical hero gives himself over to the three spirits to pull him apart into identification with dead nature victimized by winter. Instead of praising the “bright mist” by hot tears of spring hope he perceives it as a shroud of corpses of the life’s victims – the poet eccentrically, absurdly refuses to forget about “pale carnage” beneath the surface of life. This depersonalization of the poet’s psyche keeps it intact from the repressive vigor of living imposed on human beings, and instead allows him to keep his creative need alive. Spirituality here is depicted as identification with death through fragmentation. )