In the following line, we misread "posts" as "poets":
The piazza was supported by posts, one of which had been removed about a year before the accident, to improve the billiard room.
So we were left imagining the billiard players marveling at the improved atmosphere now that Percy wasn't rhapsodizing over people's balls. "High as thy balls instruct my Muse to soar," he was wont to say, invoking "The God that in a mood of tender humor limned thy balls of
black and
red."