| "Ezra Pound" | |
| And then went down to the ship, Set keel to the breakers, forth on the godly sea, 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 with bellying canvas, Came Neptunus his mind leaping like dolphins, These concepts the human mind has attained. To make Cosmos- To achieve the possible- Muss., wrecked for an error, But the record the palimpsest- a little light in great darkness- cuniculi- An old "crank" dead in Virginia. Unprepared young burdened with records, The vision of the Madonna above the cigar butts and over the portal. "Have made a mass of laws" (mucchio di leggi) Litterae nihil sanantes Justinian's, a tangle of works unfinished. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain "The sublime" In the old sense. Wrong from the start- Unaffected by "the march of events," He passed from men's memory The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace; Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze; Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Beneath the sagging roof The stylist has taken shelter, Unpaid, uncelebrated, At last from the world's welter The haven from sophistications and contentions Leaks through its thatch; He offers succulent cooking; The door has a creaking latch. And I am not a demigod, I can not make it cohere. If love be not in the house there is nothing. The voice of famine unheard. How came beauty against this blackness, Twice beauty under the elms- To be saved by squirrels and bluejays? Ariadne. 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, cam we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. But to affirm the gold thread in the pattern To confess wrong without losing rightness: Charity I have had sometimes, I cannot make it flow thru. Ariadne. Ariadne. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Caught in the unstopped ear; Giving the rocks small lee-way The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year. | |