Ezra Pound (1885 -- 1972)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Four and forty lovers had Agathas in the old days,
All of whom she refused;
And now she turns to me seeking love,
And her hair also is turning.
I have fed your lar with poppies,
I have adored you for three full years;
And now you grumble because your dress does not fit
And because I happen to say so.
Memnon, Memnon, that lady
Who used to walk about amongst us
With such gracious uncertainty,
Is now wedded
To a British householder.
Lugete, Veneres! Lugete, Cupidinesque!
Flawless as Aphrodite,
Thoroughly beautiful,
Brainless,
The faint odor of your patchouli,
Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin,
Assails me, and concerns me almost as little.
Go, dumb-born book,
Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
Hadst thou but song
As thou hast subjects known,
Then were there cause in thee that should condone
Even my faults that heavy upon me lie
And build her glories their longevity.
Tell her that sheds
Such treasure in the air,
Recking naught else but that her graces give
Life to the moment,
I would bid them live
As roses might, in magic amber laid,
Red overwrought with orange and all made
One substance and one colour
Braving time.
Tell her that goes
With song upon her lips
But sings not out the song, nor knows
The maker of it, some other mouth,
May be as fair as hers,
Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,
When our two dusts with Waller’s shall be laid,
Siftings on siftings in oblivion,
Till change hath broken down
All things save Beauty alone.
A STUDY IN AN EMOTION
''Tis but a vague, invarious delight.
As gold that rains about some buried king.
As the fine flakes,
When tourists frolicking
Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light
Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes
And start to inspect some further pyramid;
As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath
Their transitory step and merriment,
Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus
Gains yet another crust
Of useless riches for the occupant,
So I, the fires that lit once dreams
Now over and spent,
Lie dead within four walls
And so now love
Rains down and so enriches some stiff case,
And strews a mind with precious metaphors,
And so the space
Of my still consciousness
Is full of gilded snow,
The which, no cat has eyes enough
To see the brightness of.'
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly seas, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?”
And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”
And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
“A second time? why? man of ill star,
“Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
“Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
“For soothsay.”
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus
“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
“Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away
And unto Circe.
Venerandam,
In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden
Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:
Zeus lies in Ceres’ bosom
Taishan is attended of loves
under Cythera, before sunrise
And he said: “Hay aquí mucho catolicismo—(sounded
catolithismo
y muy poco reliHion.”
and he said: “Yo creo que los reyes desparecen”
(Kings will, I think, disappear)
This was Padre José Elizondo
in 1906 and in 1917
or about 1917
and Dolores said: “Come pan, niño,” eat bread, me lad
Sargent had painted her
before he descended
(i.e. if he descended
but in those days he did thumb sketches,
impressions of the Velázquez in the Museo del Prado
and books cost a peseta,
brass candlesticks in proportion,
hot wind came from the marshes
and death-chill from the mountains.
And later Bowers wrote: “but such hatred,
I have never conceived such”
and the London reds wouldn’t show up his friends
(i.e. friends of Franco
working in London) and in Alcázar
forty years gone, they said: go back to the station to eat
you can sleep here for a peseta”
goat bells tinkled all night
and the hostess grinned: Eso es luto, haw!
mi marido es muerto
(it is mourning, my husband is dead)
when she gave me a paper to write on
with a black border half an inch or more deep,
say 5/8ths, of the locanda
“We call all foreigners frenchies”
and the egg broke in Cabranez’ pocket,
thus making history. Basil says
they beat drums for three days
till all the drumheads were busted
(simple village fiesta)
and as for his life in the Canaries…
Possum observed that the local portagoose folk dance
was danced by the same dancers in divers localities
in political welcome…
the technique of demonstration
Cole studied that (not G.D.H., Horace)
“You will find” said old André Spire,
that every man on that board (Crédit Agricole)
has a brother-in-law
“You the one, I the few”
said John Adams
speaking of fears in the abstract
to his volatile friend Mr Jefferson.
(To break the pentameter, that was the first heave)
or as Jo Bard says: they never speak to each other,
if it is baker and concierge visibly
it is La Rouchefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly.
“Te cavero le budella”
“La corata a te”
In less than a geological epoch
said Henry Mencken
“Some cook, some do not cook
some things cannot be altered”
’Iugx. . . . . ’emòn potí dwma aòn andra
What counts is the cultural level,
thank Benin for this table ex packing box
“doan yu tell no one I made it”
from a mask fine as any in Frankfurt
“It’ll get you offn th’ groun”
Light as the branch of Kuanon
And at first disappointed with shoddy
the bare ram-shackle quais, but then saw the
high buggy wheels
and was reconciled,
George Santayana arriving in the port of Boston
and kept to the end of his life that faint thethear
of the Spaniard
as grace quasi imperceptible
as did Muss the v for u of Romagna
and said the grief was a full act
repeated for each new condoleress
working up to a climax.
and George Horace said he wd/ “get Beveridge” (Senator)
Beveridge wouldn’t talk and he wouldn’t write for the papers
but George got him by campin’ in his hotel
and assailin’ him at lunch breakfast an’ dinner
three articles
and my ole man went on hoein’ corn
while George was a-tellin’ him,
come across a vacant lot
where you’d occasionally see a wild rabbit
or mebbe only a loose one
AOI!
a leaf in the current
at my grates no Althea
______
libretto
______
Yet
Ere the season died a-cold
Borne upon a zephyr’s shoulder
I rose through the aureate sky
Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest
Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,
Has he tempered the viol’s wood
To enforce both the grave and the acute?
Has he curved us the bowl of the lute?
Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest
Dolmetsch ever be thy guest
Hast ’ou fashioned so airy a mood
To draw up leaf from the root?
Hast ’ou found a cloud so light
As seemed neither mist nor shade?
Then resolve me, tell me aright
If Waller sang or Dowland played
Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly
I may the beauté of hem nat susteyne
And for 180 years almost nothing.
Ed ascoltando al leggier mormorio
there came new subtlety of eyes into my tent,
whether of the spirit or hypostasis,
but what the blindfold hides
or at carneval
nor any pair showed anger
Saw but the eyes and stance between the eyes,
colour, diastasis,
careless or unaware it had not the
whole tent’s room
nor was place for the full EidwV
interpass, penetrate
casting but shade beyond the other lights
sky’s clear
night’s sea
green of the mountain pool
shone from the unmasked eyes in half-mask’s space.
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.
“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare”
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.
But to have done instead of not doing
this is not vanity
To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
This is not vanity.
Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered . . .
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