Masks of the Illuminati by Robert A. Wilson

extraneous reading should be limited to matter of a spiritually uplifting nature. He began to study the mystical Irish poet, William Butler Yeats.
    The question “Another of us?” came back to him again and again, as he read poem after poem, and this time hehad confidence enough to answer it with a definite “yes.” There was no mistaking it; the poetry of Yeats was replete with oblique references to the Golden Dawn teachings and initiatory ceremonies.
    And then, by the wildest of coincidences—Sir John was less and less inclined to believe in coincidences by now—he was invited to a small private reading at which Yeats and a few other poets were going to declaim some of the more recent works. Sir John accepted, feeling vaguely guilty; but then, he reminded himself, he was only forbidden to associate with other
known
members of the Order, and he did not, literally,
know
Yeats was a member, after all, since that was only a deduction, almost a guess, on his part.
    A small devilish voice told him, “It’s not a guess; you
do
know.” But he put that aside. The chance to meet another member of the Order—a famous one, and one who, judging from the poetry, had been in the Order for at least a decade and was hence presumably quite advanced—was really irresistible. Sir John went to the reading, even though it was in the godforsaken suburb of Kensington, which was said to be even more infested with Hindus, Hebrews, Americans and other undesirables than Soho itself.
    Indeed, the host turned out to be an American, of the most unbearable sort. His accent was nearly indecipherable—Sir John remembered the degenerate Oscar Wilde’s really choice aphorism: “The English and the Americans have everything in common but their language.” This unusual host was, like all Americans, bombastically sure of himself on all matters, especially (in his case) literature and the arts in general. His family name was Pound and his first name was one of those Hebraic titles that many Yankees seemed to favor—Ezekiel or Ezra or Jeremiah or something equally Old Testament. He had untidy red hair, a wild red beard, stood well over six feet and boomedwhen he talked, like all Americans. No article of clothing he wore seemed to match any other article of his apparel; whether this was due to poverty, eccentricity or both, Sir John could not quite decide.
    Even the handsome Yeats himself was, if not unkempt, far from ideal in sartorial splendor, Sir John also noted; but Yeats was serene where Pound was frantic, tolerant where Pound was dogmatic and gentle where Pound was rough.
    The readings were exceedingly miscellaneous. Pound read some amazingly short and unrhymed poems unlike anything Sir John had ever heard and then a very strange translation of “The Seafarer,” in which he had somehow managed, in modern English, to include as many alliterative consonants and guttural assonances as the Anglo-Saxon original. A shy young lady named Hilda-something read some equally short pieces which sounded like very literal translations from the ancient Greek. Then, at last, Yeats began chanting and keening in his distinctive way, and Sir John finally heard something that sounded like real poetry to him. He almost wept with emotion at the lines:
    Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone;
It’s with O’Leary in his grave
    Afterward, the bombastic Pound served some of the strongest coffee Sir John had ever tasted, and led everybody into a lively discussion about what they had heard. English poetry, Pound said violently, was “trapped in the Miltonic trance,” which he sarcastically caricatured as “whakty-whakty-whakty-whakty-boom! boom! whakty-whakty-whakty-boom! boom!” Experiments such as Hilda’s imitations of the ancient Greeks, Yeats’ recreation of Bardic forms of old Ireland and his own adaptions from the Chinese were necessary to enlarge the scope and range ofverse, said this upstart. Several people immediately began protesting, and it seemed that