Lustra of Ezra Pound

Birds with flowery wing, hovering butterflies
crowd over the thousand gates,
Trees that glitter like jade,
terraces tinged with silver,
The seed of a myriad hues,
A net-work of arbours and passages and covered ways,
Double towers, winged roofs,
border the net-work of ways:
A place of felicitous meeting.
Riu’s house stands out on the sky,
with glitter of colour
As Butei of Kan had made the high golden lotus
to gather his dews,
Before it another house which I do not know:
How shall we know all the friends
whom we meet on strange roadways?

To-Em-Mei’s “The Unmoving Cloud”

“Wet springtime,” says To-em-mei,
“Wet spring in the garden.”

I.

The clouds have gathered, and gathered,
and the rain falls and falls,
The eight ply of the heavens
are all folded into one darkness,
And the wide, flat road stretches out.
I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet,
I pat my new cask of wine.
My friends are estranged, or far distant,
I bow my head and stand still.

II.

Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered,
The eight ply of the heavens are darkness,
The flat land is turned into river.
“Wine, wine, here is wine!”
I drink by my eastern window.
I think of talking and man,
And no boat, no carriage, approaches.

III.

The trees in my east-looking garden
are bursting out with new twigs,
They try to stir new affection,

And men say the sun and moon keep on moving
because they can’t find a soft seat.

The birds flutter to rest in my tree,
and I think I have heard them saying,
“It is not that there are no other men
But we like this fellow the best,
But however we long to speak
He can not know of our sorrow.”

T’ao Yuan Ming.
A.D. 365-427.

End of Cathay

Near Perigord

A Perigord, pres del muralh
Tan que i puosch ’om gitar ab malh.

You’d have men’s hearts up from the dust
And tell their secrets, Messire Cino,
Right enough? Then read between the lines
of Uc St. Cire,
Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale.

Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone:
“Maent, I love you, you have turned me out.
The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes’ hair,
Bel Miral’s stature, the vicountess’ throat,
Set all together, are not worthy of you ...”
And all the while you sing out that canzone,
Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac,
One at Chalais, another at Malemort
Hard over Brive—for every lady a castle,
Each place strong.

Oh, is it easy enough?
Tairiran held hall in Montaignac,
His brother-in-law was all there was of power
In Perigord, and this good union
Gobbled all the land, and held it later
for some hundreds years.
And our En Bertrans was in Altafort,
Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife,
As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell—
The headless trunk “that made its head a lamp.”
For separation wrought out separation,
And he who set the strife between brother and brother
And had his way with the old English king,
Viced in such torture for the “counterpass.”

How would you live, with neighbours set about you—
Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochechouart,
Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand;
And you on that great mountain of a palm—
Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams,
But one huge back half-covered up with pine,
Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born—
The four round towers, four brothers—mostly fools:
What could he do but play the desperate chess,
And stir old grudges?
“Pawn your castles, lords!
Let the Jews pay.”
And the great scene—
(That, maybe, never happened!)
Beaten at last,
Before the hard old king:
“Your son, ah, since he died
My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside
In the full flare of grief. Do what you will.”

Take the whole man, and ravel out the story.
He loved this lady in castle Montaignac?
The castle flanked him—he had need of it.
You read to-day, how long the overlords of Perigord,
The Talleyrands, have held the place, it was no transient fiction.
And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme?

And all his net-like thought of new alliance?
Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars.
Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips
Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies.
And Rochechouart can match it, stronger yet,
The very spur’s end, built on sheerest cliff,
And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive,
While Born his own close purse, his rabbit warren,
His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors,
A-bristle with antennae to feel roads,
To sniff the traffic into Perigord.
And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line,
The ten good miles from thence to Maent’s castle,
All of his flank—how could he do without her?
And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse?
What would he do without her?

“Papiol,
Go forthright singing—Anhes, Cembelins.
There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands;
There is a trellis full of early roses,
And all my heart is bound about with love.
Where am I come with compound flatteries—
What doors are open to fine compliment?”
And every one half jealous of Maent?
He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies
Against her, give her pride in them?

Take his own speech, make what you will of it—
And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent?

Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war?
Is it an intrigue to run subtly out,
Born of a jongleur’s tongue, freely to pass
Up and about and in and out the land,
Mark him a craftsman and a strategist?
(St. Leider had done as much at Polhonac,
Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.)
Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition,
To sing one thing when your song means another,
“Et albirar ab lor bordon—”
Foix’ count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans’ singing?

Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent,
Or war and broken heaumes and politics?

II

End fact. Try fiction, Let us say we see
En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort,
Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light,
South toward Montaignac, and he bends at a table
Scribbling, swearing between his teeth, by his left hand
Lie little strips of parchment covered over,
Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos.
Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious?
With a red straggling beard?
And the green cat’s-eye lifts toward Montaignac.

Or take his “magnet” singer setting out,
Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at Chalais

In the vaulted hall,
Or, by a lichened tree at Rochechouart
Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys,
Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening,
Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul ...
To find her half alone, Montfort away,
And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her,
Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one.
Little enough?
Or carry him forward. “Go through all the courts,
My Magnet,” Bertrand had said.

We came to Ventadour
In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon,
No one hears save Arrimon Luc D’Esparo—
No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments.
Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort,
Rochechouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic,
Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Cœur de Lion:

The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled
About his castle, cattle driven out!
Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered?

And ten years after, or twenty, as you will,
Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus:
The dull round towers encroaching on the field,
The tents tight drawn, horses at tether
Further and out of reach, the purple night,
The crackling of small fires, the bannerets,
The lazy leopards on the largest banner,
Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer’s torch-flare
Melting on steel.

And in the quietest space
They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead;
And we’ve the gossip (skipped six hundred years).
Richard shall die to-morrow—leave him there
Talking of trobar clus with Daniel.
And the “best craftsman” sings out his friend’s song,
Envies its vigour ... and deplores the technique,
Dispraises his own skill?—That’s as you will.
And they discuss the dead man,
Plantagenet puts the riddle: “Did he love her?”
And Arnaut parries: “Did he love your sister?
True, he has praised her, but in some opinion
He wrote that praise only to show he had
The favour of your party, had been well received.”

“You knew the man.”
“You knew the man.”
“I am an artist, you have tried both métiers.”
“You were born near him.”
“Do we know our friends?”
“Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maent!”
“Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle?”
End the discussion, Richard goes out next day
And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard,
Pardons the bowman, dies,

Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends
“In sacred odour”—(that’s apocryphal!)
And we can leave the talk till Dante writes:
Surely I saw, and still before my eyes
Goes on that headless trunk, that bears for light
Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair,
And like a swinging lamp that says, “Ah me!
I severed men, my head and heart
Ye see here severed, my life’s counterpart.”

Or take En Bertrans?

III

Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due.
Inferno, XXVIII, 125.

“Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere
Poppies and day’s-eyes in the green émail
Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,
And our two horses had traced out the valleys;
Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars,
In the young days when the deep sky befriended.
And great wings beat above us in the twilight,
And the great wheels in heaven
Bore us together ... surging ... and apart ...
Believing we should meet with lips and hands.

High, high and sure ... and then the counter-thrust:
‘Why do you love me? Will you always love me?
But I am like the grass, I can not love you.’
Or, ‘Love, and I love and love you,
And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.’

So to this last estrangement, Tairiran!

There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s,
She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,
Gone—ah, gone—untouched, unreachable!
She who could never live save through one person,
She who could never speak save to one person,
And all the rest of her a shifting change,
A broken bundle of mirrors ...!”

Villanelle: the Psychological Hour

I had over-prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

“Their little cosmos is shaken”—
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I know?
Oh, I know well enough.
For them there is something afoot.

As for me:
I had over-prepared the event—

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

Two friends: a breath of the forest ...
Friends? Are people less friends
because one has lust, at least, found them?
Twice they promised to come.
“Between the night and morning?”

Beauty would drink of my mind.
Youth would awhile forget
my youth is gone from me.

II

(“Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?
Someone admired your works,
And said so frankly.

“Did you talk like a fool,
The first night?
The second evening?”

“But they promised again:
‘To-morrow at tea-time.’”)

III

Now the third day is here—
no word from either;
No word from her nor him,
Only another man’s note:
“Dear Pound, I am leaving England.”

Dans un Omnibus de Londres

Les yeux d’une morte aimée
M’ont salué,
Enchassés dans un visage stupide
Dont tous les autres traits étaient banals,
Ils m’ont salué

Et alors je vis bien des choses
Au dedans de ma mémoire
Remuer,
S’éveiller.

Je vis des canards sur le bord d’un lac minuscule,
Auprès d’un petit enfant gai, bossu.

Je vis les colonnes anciennes en “toc”
Du Parc Monceau,
Et deux petites filles graciles,
Des patriciennes,
aux toisons couleur de lin,
Et des pigeonnes
Grasses
comme des poulardes.

Je vis le parc,
Et tous les gazons divers
Où nous avions loué des chaises
Pour quatre sous.

Je vis les cygnes noirs,
Japonais,
Leurs ailes
Teintées de couleur sang-de-dragon,

Et toutes les fleurs
D’Armenonville.

Les yeux d’une morte
M’ont salué.

To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers

“Breathe not the word to-morrow in her ears.”
Vir Quidem, on Dancers.

Good “Hedgethorn,” for we’ll anglicize your name
Until the last slut’s hanged and the last pig disemboweled,
Seeing your wife is charming and your child
Sings in the open meadow—at least the kodak says so—
My good fellow, you, on a cabaret silence
And the dancers, you write a sonnet,
Say “Forget To-morrow,” being of all men
The most prudent, orderly, and decorous!

“Pepita” has no to-morrow, so you write.

Pepita has such to-morrows: with the hands puffed out,
The pug-dog’s features encrusted with tallow
Sunk in a frowsy collar—an unbrushed black.
She will not bathe too often, but her jewels
Will be a stuffy, opulent sort of fungus
Spread on both hands and on the up-pushed bosom—
It juts like a shelf between the jowl and corset.

Have you, or I seen most of cabarets, good Hedgethorn?

Here’s Pepita, tall and slim as an Egyptian mummy,
Marsh-cranberries, the ribbed and angular pods
Flare up with scarlet orange on stiff stalks
And so Pepita
flares on the crowded stage before our tables
Or slithers about between the dishonest waiters—

“Carmen est maigre, un trait de bistre
Cerne son œil de gitana”

And “rend la flamme”
you know the deathless verses.
I search the features, the avaricious features
Pulled by the kohl and rouge out of resemblance—
Six pence the object for a change of passion.

“Write me a poem.”
Come now, my dear Pepita,
“-ita, bonita, chiquita,”
that’s what you mean you advertising spade,
Or take the intaglio, my fat great-uncle’s heirloom:
Cupid, astride a phallus with two wings,
Swinging a cat-o’-nine-tails.
No. Pepita,
I have seen through the crust.
I don’t know what you look like
But your smile pulls one way
and your painted grin another,
While that cropped fool,
that tom-boy who can’t earn her living.
Come, come to-morrow,
To-morrow in ten years at the latest,
She will be drunk in the ditch, but you, Pepita,
Will be quite rich, quite plump, with pug-bitch features,
With a black tint staining your cuticle,
Prudent and svelte Pepita.
“Poète, writ me a poème!”
Spanish and Paris, love of the arts part of your
geisha-culture!

Euhenia, in short skirts, slaps her wide stomach,
Pulls up a roll of fat for the pianist,
“Pauvre femme maigre!” she says.
He sucks his chop bone,
That some one else has paid for,
grins up an amiable grin,
Explains the decorations.
Good Hedgethorn, they all have futures,
All these people.
Old Popkoff
Will dine next week with Mrs. Basil,
Will meet a duchess and an ex-diplomat’s widow
From Weehawken—who has never known
Any but “Majesties” and Italian nobles.

Euhenia will have a fonda in Orbajosa.
The amorous nerves will give way to digestive;
“Delight thy soul in fatness,” saith the preacher.
We can’t preserve the elusive “mica salis,”
It may last well in these dark northern climates,
Nell Gwynn’s still here, despite the reformation,
And Edward’s mistresses still light the stage,
A glamour of classic youth in their deportment.
The prudent whore is not without her future,
Her bourgeois dulness is deferred.
Her present dulness....

Oh well, her present dulness....

Now in Venice, ‘Storante al Giardino, I went early,
Saw the performers come: him, her, the baby,
A quiet and respectable-tawdry trio;
An hour later: a show of calves and spangles,

“Un e due fanno tre,”
Night after night,
No change, no change of program, “Chè!
La donna è mobile.”

Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus

(Ex libris Graecae)

IV

Troy

Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,
And your barbecues of great oxen,
And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes,
With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes?
Where is the work of your home-born sculptors?

Time’s tooth is into the lot, and war’s and fate’s too.
Envy has taken your all,
Save your douth and your story.

Agathas Scholasticus.

V

Woman? Oh, woman is a consummate rage,
but dead, or asleep, she pleases.
Take her. She has two excellent seasons.

Palladas.

VI

Nicharcus upon Phidon his doctor

Phidon neither purged me, nor touched me,
But I remembered the name of his fever medicine
and died.

Fish and the Shadow

The salmon-trout drifts in the stream,
The soul of the salmon-trout floats over the stream
Like a little wafer of light.

The salmon moves in the sun-shot, bright shallow sea....

As light as the shadow of the fish
that falls through the water,
She came into the large room by the stair,
Yawning a little she came with the sleep still upon her.

“I am just from bed. The sleep is still in my eyes.
“Come. I have had a long dream.”

And I: “That wood?
And two springs have passed us.”

“Not so far, no, not so far now,
There is a place—but no one else knows it—
A field in a valley....
Qu’ieu sui avinen,
Ieu lo sai.”

She must speak of the time
Of Arnaut de Mareuil, I thought, “qu’ieu sui avinen.”

Light as the shadow of the fish
That falls through the pale green water.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.