10 Kensington Church Walk

Pound's old house

is now a poster shop

with Kensington Playboy Agencies upstairs

Well, some of the poems were bold as posters

and he managed to conduct a menage a trois in Rapallo

The house has no blue plaque

The campaign failed

his p o litical odour in the civic nostrils

being very bad

The house itself had a smell

the poet complained about

being a man with a vocation for complaints

He remade literature from this place

before he fell for Mussolini

Reading the letters you realize

he wanted to make the poems run on time

but he became the mad despatcher

and whole shipments went off the rails

Across the street the church

still has the bells Pound hated

He wrote a letter of complaint so witty

the vicar posted it in the vestry

but didn't mute the bells

a portent for a prophet

As a compromise a blue plaque

could be placed in the belfry

to keep company with the bats