Ezra Pound: Selected Poems

Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, Go also to the  
nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved-by-convention, Bear to them my  
contempt for their oppressors.  
Go as a great wave of cool water, Bear my contempt of oppressors.  
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny  
of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.  
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women  
in suburbs.  
Go to the hideously wedded, Go to them whose failure is  
concealed, Go to the unluckily mated, Go to the bought wife, Go to  
the woman entailed.  
Go to those who have delicate lust, Go to those whose delicate  
desires are thwarted, Go like a blight upon the dulness of the  
world; Go with your edge against this, Strengthen the subtle cords,  
Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles of the soul.  
Go in a friendly manner, Go with an open speech.  
Be eager to find new evils and new good, Be against all forms of  
oppression.  
Go to those who are thickened with middle age, To those who have  
lost their interest.  
Go to the adolescent who are smothered in familyOh how hideous  
it is To see three generations of one house gathered together!  
It is like an old tree with shoots, And with some branches rotted  
and falling.  
Go out and defy opinion, Go against this vegetable bondage of the  
blood.  
Be against all sorts of mortmain. In vain have I striven  
to teach my heart to bow;  
In vain have I said to him  
"There be many singers greater than thou."  
But his answer cometh, as winds and as lutany,  
As a vague crying upon the night  
That leaveth me no rest, saying ever,  
"Song, a song."  
Their echoes play upon each other in the twilight  
Seeking ever a song.  
Lo, I am worn with travail  
And the wandering of many roads hath made my eyes  
As dark red circles filled with dust.  
Yet there is a trembling upon me in the twilight,  
And little red elf words  
crying "A song,"  
Little grey elf words  
crying for a song,  
Little brown leaf words  
crying "A song,"  
Little green leaf words  
crying for a song.  
The words are as leaves, old brown leaves in the spring time  
Blowing they know not whither, seeking a song.  
White words as snow flakes but they are cold  
Moss words, lip words, words of slow streams.  
In vain have I striven  
To teach my soul to bow,  
In vain have I pled with him,  
"There be greater souls than thou."  
For in the morn of my years there came a woman  
As moon light calling  
As moon calleth the tides,  
"Song, a song."  
Wherefore I made her a song and she went from me  
As the moon doth from the sea,  
But still came the leaf words, little brown elf words  
Saying "The soul sendeth us."  
A song, a song!"  
And in vain I cried unto them "I have no song  
For she I sang of hath gone from me." I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,  
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;  
Of Daphne and the laurel bow  
And that god-feasting couple old  
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.  
'Twas not until the gods had been  
Kindly entreated, and been brought within  
Unto the hearth of their heart's home  
That they might do this wonder thing;  
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood  
And many a new thing understood  
That was rank folly to my head before. I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads  
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.  
 
I have beheld the Lady of Life,  
I, even I, who fly with the swallows.  
 
Green and gray is her rainment,  
Trailing along the wind.  
 
I, even I, aim he who knowth the roads  
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.  
 
Manus animam pinxit,  
My pen is in my hand  
 
To write the acceptable word...  
My mouth to chant the pure singing!  
 
Who hath the mouth to receive it,  
The song of the Lotus of Kumi?  
 
I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads  
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.  
 
I am flame that riseth in the sun,  
I, even I, who fly with the swallows.  
 
The moon is upon my forehead,  
The winds are under my lips.  
 
The moon is a great pearl in the waters of sapphire,  
Cool to my fingers the flowing waters.  
 
I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads  
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. O strange face there in the glass!  
O ribald company, O saintly host,  
O sorrow-swept my fool,  
What answer? O ye myriad  
That strive and play and pass,  
Jest, challenge, counterlie!  
I? I? I?  
And ye? "Thank you, whatever comes." And then she turned  
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers  
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,  
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes  
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods  
May not make boast of any better thing  
Than to have watched that hour as it passed. The tree has entered my hands,  
The sap has ascended my arms,  
The tree has grown in my breast -  
Downward,  
The branches grow out of me, like arms.  
 
Tree you are,  
Moss you are,  
You are violets with wind above them.  
A child - so high - you are,  
And all this is folly to the world. 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 am near my desire.  
Nor has life in it aught better  
Than this hour of clear coolness  
the hour of waking together. Come, or the stellar tide will slip away.  
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,  
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!  
 
Here have we had the vantage, the good hour.  
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.  
Come now, before this power  
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole.  
Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be.  
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly.  
The waves bore in, soon will they bear away.  
 
The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it.  
Move we and take the tide, with its next favour,  
Abide  
Under some neutral force  
Until this course turneth aside. I would bathe myself in strangeness:  
These comforts heaped upon me, smother me!  
I burn, I scald so for the new,  
New friends, new faces,  
Places!  
Oh to be out of this,  
This that is all I wanted  
- save the new.  
 
And you,  
Love, you the much, the more desired!  
Do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones,  
All mire, mist, all fog,  
All ways of traffic?  
You, I wold have flow over me like water,  
Oh, but far out of this!  
Grass, and low fields, and hills,  
And sun,  
Oh, sun enough!  
Out, and alone, among some  
Alien people! Three spirits came to me  
And drew me apart  
To where the olive boughs  
Lay stripped upon the ground:  
Pale carnage beneath bright mist. When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs  
I am compelled to conclude  
That man is the superior animal.  
 
When I consider the curious habits of man  
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled. Erinna is a model parent,  
Her children have never discovered her adulteries.  
Lalage is also a model parent,  
Her offspring are fat and happy. The apparition of these faces in the crowd:  
Petals on a wet, black bough. As cool as the pale wet leaves  
of lily-of-the-valley  
She lay beside me in the dawn. O fan of white silk,  
clear as frost on the grass-blade,  
You also are laid aside. And the days are not full enough  
And the nights are not full enough  
And life slips by like a field mouse  
Not shaking the grass Empty are the ways,  
Empty are the ways of this land  
And the flowers  
Bend over with heavy heads.  
They bend in vain.  
Empty are the ways of this land  
Where Ione  
Walked once, and now does not walk  
But seems like a person just gone. Thy soul  
Grown delicate with satieties  
Atthis.  
O Atthis,  
I long for thy lips.  
I long for thy narrow breasts,  
Thou restless, ungathered. And Li Po also died drunk.  
He tried to embrace a moon  
In the yellow river. So-Shu dreamed,  
And having dramed that he was a bird, a bee, a butterfly,  
He was uncertain why he should try to feel like anything else.  
Hence his contentment. These fought in any case,  
and some believing  
pro domo, in any case .....  
 
Died some, pro patria,  
walked eye-deep in hell  
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving  
came home, home to a lie,  
home to many deceits,  
home to old lies and new infamy;  
usury age-old and age-thick  
and liars in public places.  
 
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.  
Young blood and high blood,  
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;  
 
fortitude as never before  
 
frankness as never before,  
disillusions as never told in the old days,  
hysterias, trench confessions,  
laughter out of dead bellies. I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -  
I have detested you long enough.  
I come to you as a grown child  
Who has had a pig-headed father;  
I am old enough now to make friends.  
It was you that broke the new wood,  
Now is a time for carving.  
We have one sap and one root -  
Let there be commerce between us. Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.  
Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future.  
You are very idle, my songs,  
I fear you will come to a bad end.  
You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,  
You do next to nothing at all.  
 
You do not even express our inner nobilitys,  
You will come to a very bad end.  
 
And I? I have gone half-cracked.  
I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me,  
Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing!  
 
But you, newest song of the lot,  
You are not old enough to have done much mischief.  
I will get you a green coat out of China  
With dragons worked upon it.  
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers  
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella;  
Lest they say we are lacking in taste,  
Or that there is no caste in this family. The thought of what America would be like  
If the Classics had a wide circulation  
Troubles my sleep,  
The thought of what America,  
The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be like  
If the Classics had a wide circulation  
Troubles my sleep.  
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,  
Now lettest thou thy servant  
Depart in peace.  
The thought of what America,  
The thought of what America,  
The thought of what America would be like  
If the Classics had a wide circulation...  
Oh well!  
It troubles my sleep. Me happy, night full of brightness;  
Oh couch made happy by my long delectations;  
How many words talked out with abundant candles; Struggles when the lights were taken away;  
Now with bared breasts she wrestled against me,  
Tunic spread in delay;  
And she then opening my eyelids fallen in sleep,  
Her lips upon them; and it was her mouth saying:  
Sluggard!  
 
In how many varied embraces, our changing arms,  
Her kisses, how many, lingering on my lips.  
"Turn not Venus into a blined motion  
Eyes are the guides of love,  
Paris took Helen naked coming from the bed of Menelaus,  
Endymion's naked body, bright bait for Diana,"  
-such atleast is the story.  
 
While our fates twine together, state we our eyes with love;  
For long night comes upon you  
and a day when no day returns.  
Let the gods lay chains upon us  
so that no day shall unbind them.  
 
Fool who would set a term to love's madness  
For the sun shall drive with black horses,  
earth shall bring wheat from barley,  
The flood shall move toward the fountain  
Ere love know moderations,  
The fish shall swim in dry streams.  
No, now while it may be, let not the fruit of life cease.  
 
Dry wreaths drop their petals,  
their stalks are woven in baskets,  
To-day we take the great breath of lovers,  
to-morrow fate shuts us in.  
 
Though you give all your kisses  
you give but few.  
 
Nor can I shift my pains to other,  
Hers will I be dead,  
If she confer such nights upon me,  
long is my life, long in years,  
If she give me many,  
God am I for the time. In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht  
Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer  
Dangers of delay. "Consider  
Carefully the reviewer.  
 
"I was as poor as you are;  
"When I began I got, of course,  
"Advance on royalties, fifty at first", said Mr. Nixon,  
"Follow me, and take a column,  
"Even if you have to work free.  
 
"Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred  
"I rose in eighteen months;  
"The hardest nut I had to crack  
"Was Dr. Dundas.  
 
"I never mentioned a man but with the view  
"Of selling my own works.  
"The tip's a good one, as for literature  
"It gives no man a sinecure."  
 
And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.  
And give up verse, my boy,  
There's nothing in it."  
 
* * *  
 
Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:  
Don't kick against the pricks,  
Accept opinion. The "Nineties" tried your game  
And died, there's nothing in it. You came in out of the night  
And there were flowers in your hand,  
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,  
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.  
 
I who have seen you amid the primal things  
Was angry when they spoke your name  
IN ordinary places.  
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,  
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,  
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,  
So that I might find you again,  
Alone. 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 --  
 
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born  
In a half savage country, out of date;  
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;  
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:  
 
"Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie  
Caught in the unstopped ear;  
Giving the rocks small lee-way  
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.  
 
His true Penelope was Flaubert,  
He fished by obstinate isles;  
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair  
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.  
 
Unaffected by "the march of events",  
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentiesme  
De son eage; the case presents  
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.  
 
II.  
 
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 "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,  
Made with no loss of time,  
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster  
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.  
 
III.  
 
The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.  
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,  
The pianola "replaces"  
Sappho's barbitos.  
 
Christ follows Dionysus,  
Phallic and ambrosial  
Made way for macerations;  
Caliban casts out Ariel.  
 
All things are a flowing,  
Sage Heracleitus says;  
But a tawdry cheapness  
Shall reign throughout our days.  
 
Even the Christian beauty  
Defects -- after Samothrace;  
We see to kalon  
Decreed in the market place.  
 
Faun's flesh is not to us,  
Nor the saint's vision.  
We have the press for wafer;  
Franchise for circumcision.  
 
All men, in law, are equals.  
Free of Peisistratus,  
We choose a knave or an eunuch  
To rule over us.  
 
A bright Apollo,  
 
tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,  
What god, man, or hero  
Shall I place a tin wreath upon?  
 
IV.  
 
These fought, in any case,  
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ..  
 
Some quick to arm,  
some for adventure,  
some from fear of weakness,  
some from fear of censure,  
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,  
learning later ...  
 
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;  
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" ..  
 
walked eye-deep in hell  
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving  
came home, home to a lie,  
home to many deceits,  
home to old lies and new infamy;  
 
usury age-old and age-thick  
and liars in public places.  
 
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.  
Young blood and high blood,  
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;  
 
fortitude as never before  
 
frankness as never before,  
disillusions as never told in the old days,  
hysterias, trench confessions,  
laughter out of dead bellies.  
 
V.  
 
There died a myriad,  
And of the best, among them,  
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,  
For a botched civilization.  
 
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,  
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,  
 
For two gross of broken statues,  
For a few thousand battered books. 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 just, at last, found them?  
Twice they promised to come.  
 
"Between the night and the morning?"  
Beauty would drink of my mind.  
Youth would awhile forget  
my youth is gone from me.  
 
(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'.")  
 
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." For God, our God is a gallant foe  
That playeth behind the veil.  
 
I have loved my God as a child at heart  
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest,  
I have loved my God as a maid to man—  
But lo, this thing is best:  
 
To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil;  
To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale.  
 
I have played with God for a woman,  
I have staked with my God for truth,  
I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed—  
His dice be not of ruth.  
 
For I am made as a naked blade,  
But hear ye this thing in sooth:  
 
Who loseth to God as man to man  
Shall win at the turn of the game.  
I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet  
But the ending is the same:  
Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose  
Shall win at the end of the game.  
 
For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil.  
Whom God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail. For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee  
 
Dark-eyed,  
O woman of my dreams,  
Ivory sandalled,  
There is none like thee among the dancers,  
None with swift feet.  
I have not found thee in the tents,  
In the broken darkness.  
I have not found thee at the well-head  
Among the women with pitchers.  
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;  
Thy face as a river with lights.  
 
White as an almond are thy shoulders;  
As new almonds stripped from the husk.  
They guard thee not with eunuchs;  
Not with bars of copper.  
 
Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.  
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in  
patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,  
O Nathat-Ikanaie, 'Tree-at-the-river'.  
 
As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;  
Thy fingers a frosted stream.  
 
Thy maidens are white like pebbles;  
Their music about thee!  
 
There is none like thee among the dancers;  
None with swift feet. It is, and is not, I am sane enough,  
Since you have come this place has hovered round me,  
This fabrication built of autumn roses,  
Then there's a goldish colour, different.  
 
And one gropes in these things as delicate  
Algæ reach up and out, beneath  
Pale slow green surgings of the underwave,  
'Mid these things older than the names they have,  
These things that are familiears of the god. Hymn to the Dope  
 
Goddess of the murmuring courts,  
Nicotine, my Nicotine,  
Houri of the mystic sports,  
trailing-robed in gabardine,  
Gliding where the breath hath glided,  
Hidden sylph of filmy veils,  
Truth behind the dream is veiléd  
E'en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding,  
Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing  
Purple, grey, and shadow green  
Goddess, Dream-grace, Nicotine.  
 
Goddess of the shadow's lights,  
Nicotine, my Nicotine,  
Some would set old Earth to rights,  
Thou I none such ween.  
Veils of shade our dream dividing,  
Houris dancing, intergliding,  
Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces,  
Silent guardian of the old unhallowed places,  
Utter symbol of all old sweet druidings,  
Mem'ry of witched wold and green,  
Nicotine, my Nicotine:  
 
Neath the shadows of thy weaving  
Dreams that need no undeceiving,  
Loves that longer hold me not,  
Dreams I dream not any more,  
Fragrance of old sweet forgotten places,  
Smiles of dream-lit, flit-by faces  
All as perfume Arab-sweet  
Deck the high road to thy feet  
 
As were Godiva's coming fated  
And all the April's blush belated  
Were lain before her, carpeting  
The stones of Coventry with spring,  
So thou my mist-enwreathéd queen,  
Nicotine, white Nicotine,  
Riding engloried in they hair  
Mak'st by-road of our dreams  
Thy thorough-fare.

««« Previous Next »»»