The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter After Li Po While my hair was still cut straight across my foreheadI played about the front gate, pulling flowers.You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.At… Continue reading Ezra Pound
Exquisite lonelinessBound of mine own capriceI fly on the wings of an unknown chordThat ye hear not,Can not discernMy music is weird and untamedBarbarous, wild, extreme,I fly on the note that ye hear notOn the chord that ye can not dream. — Ezra Pound, from “Anima Sola,” Collected Early Poems (New Directions, 1976) 976)
The spaceOf my still consciousnessIs full of gilded snow, The which, no cat has eyes enoughTo see the brightness of. — Ezra Pound, from “Middle-Aged,” Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 1912–22. Edited by Harriet Monroe. (Chicago: 1912–22; New York: Bartleby.com, 2011)
COME let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers. Come let us pity the married and the unmarried. Dawn enters with little feet like a gilded Pavlova, And I… Continue reading Ezra Pound
I, who have seen you amid the primal things,Was angry when they spoke your nameIn ordinary places. — Ezra Pound, from “Francesca,” Selected Poems of Ezra Pound. (New Directions January 17, 1957)
What thou lovest well remains, the rest is drossWhat thou lov’st well shall not be reft from theeWhat thou lov’st well is thy true heritage — Ezra Pound, from “Canto LXXXI,” Cantos of Ezra Pound (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993
Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up. ― Wyndham Lewis
All the while they were talking the new moralityHer eyes explored me.And when I rose to goHer fingers were like the tissueOf a Japanese paper napkin. — Ezra Pound, “The Encounter,” Selected Poems. (New Directions January 17, 1957) Originally published 1928.
So-shu dreamed, And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee, and a butterfly, He was uncertain why he should try to feel like anything else, Hence his contentment. — Ezra Pound, “Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic,” Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Edited by Michael King. (New Directions Publishing November 17, 1982)
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever. — Ezra Pound, from “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Edited by Michael King. (New Directions Publishing November 17, 1982)
The Vale of Soul-Making 