Poems 1918-21, Including Three Portraits and Four Cantos

by Ezra Pound

Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood,
Muttering, muttering Ovid:
“Pergusa ... pool ... pool ... Gargaphia,
“Pool, pool of Salmacis.”
The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves.
Thus the light rains, thus pours, e lo soleils plovil,
The liquid, and rushing crystal
whirls up the bright brown sand.
Ply over ply, thin glitter of water;
Brook film bearing white petals
(“The pines of Takasago grow with pines of Isé”)
“Behold the Tree of the Visages.”
The forked tips flaming as if with lotus,
Ply over ply
The shallow eddying fluid
beneath the knees of the gods.

Torches melt in the glare
Set flame of the corner cook-stall,
Blue agate casing the sky, a sputter of resin;
The saffron sandal petals the narrow foot, Hymenaeus!
Io Hymen, Io Hymenaee! Aurunculeia!
The scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone,
Armaracus, Hill of Urania’s Son.
Meanwhile So-Gioku:
“This wind, sire, is the king’s wind,
this wind is wind of the palace
Shaking imperial water-jets.”
And Ran-Ti, opening his collar:
“This wind roars in the earth’s bag,
it lays the water with rushes;
“No wind is the king’s wind.
Let every cow keep her calf.”
“This wind is held in gauze curtains....”
“No wind is the king’s....”

The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs,
look down to Ecbatan of plotted streets,
“Danae! Danae!
What wind is the king’s?”
Smoke hangs on the stream,
The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water,
Sound drifts in the evening haze,
The barge scrapes at the ford.
Gilt rafters above black water;
three steps in an open field
Gray stone-posts leading nowhither.

The Spanish poppies swim in an air of glass.
Père Henri Jacques still seeks the sennin on Rokku.
Polhonac,
As Gyges on Thracian platter, set the feast;
Cabestan, Terreus.
It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.
Vidal, tracked out with dogs ... for glamour of Loba;
Upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan
Lay the god’s bride, lay ever
Waiting the golden rain.
Et saave!
But to-day, Garonne is thick like paint, beyond Dorada,
The worm of the Procession bores in the soup of the crowd
The blue thin voices against the crash of the crowd
Et “Salve regina.”

In trellises
Wound over with small flowers, beyond Adige
In the but half-used room, thin film of images,
(by Stefano)
Age of unbodied gods, the vitreous fragile images
Thin as the locust’s wing
Haunting the mind ... as of Guido ...
Thin as the locust’s wing. The Centaur’s heel
Plants in the earth-loam.

THE FIFTH CANTO

GREAT bulk, huge mass, thesaurus;
Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out;
The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan,
City of patterned streets; again the vision:
Down in the viae stradae, toga’d the crowd, and arm’d,
Rushing on populous business, and from parapets
Looked down—I looked, and thought: at North
Was Egypt, and the celestial Nile, blue-deep, cutting low barren land,
Old men and camels working the water-wheels;
Measureless seas and stars,
Iamblichus’ light, the souls ascending,
Sparks, like a partridge covey,
From the “ciocco,” brand struck in the game,
“Et omniformis”:
Air, fire, the pale soft light.
Topaz, I manage, and three sorts of blue;
but on the barb of time.
The fire? always, and the vision always,
Ear dull, perhaps, with the vision, flitting
And fading at will. Weaving with points of gold,
Gold-yellow, saffron ...
the Roman shoe, Aurunculeia’s
And come shuffling feet, and cries “Da nuces!
“Nuces” praise and Hymenaeus “brings the girl to her man,”
Titter of sound about me, always
and from Hesperus ...
Hush of the older song: “Fades light from seacrest.

“And in Lydia walks with pair’d women
“Peerless among the pairs, and that once in Sardis
“In satieties ...
“Fades the light from the sea, and many things
“Are set abroad and brought to mind of thee,”
And the vinestocks lie untended, new leaves come to the shoots,
North wind nips on the bough, and seas in heart
Toss up chill crests,
And the vine stocks lie untended
And many things are set abroad and brought to mind
Of thee, Atthis, unfruitful.
The talks ran long in the night.

And from Mauleon, fresh with a new earned grade,
In maze of approaching rain-steps, Poicebot—
The air was full of women. And Savairic Mauleon
Gave him his land and knight’s fee, and he wed the woman.
Came lust of travel on him, of romerya;
And out of England a knight with slow-lifting eyelids
Lei fassa furar a del, put glamour upon her ...
And left her an eight months gone.
Came lust of woman upon him,
Poicebot, now on North road from Spain
(Sea-change, a grey in the water)
And in small house by town’s edge
Found a woman, changed and familiar face,
Hard night, and parting at morning.
And Pieire won the singing,
Song or land on the throw, Pieire de Maensac,
and was dreitz hom
And had De Tierci’s wife and with the war they made,
Troy in Auvergnat.

While Menelaus piled up the church at port
He kept Tyndarida. Dauphin stood with de Maensac.
John Borgia is bathed at last.
(Clock-tick pierces the vision)
Tiber, dark with the cloak, wet cat, gleaming in patches.
Click of the hooves, through garbage,
Clutching the greasy stone. “And the cloak floated”
Slander is up betimes.
But Varchi of Florence,
Steeped in a different year, and pondering Brutus,
Then
SIGA MAL AUTHIS DEUTERON!
“Dog-eye!!” (to Alessandro)
“Whether for Love of Florence,” Varchi leaves it,
Saying, “I saw the man, came up with him at Venice,
“I, one wanting the facts,
“And no mean labour.
Or for a privy spite?”
Good Varchi leaves it,
But: “I saw the man. Se pia?
“O empia? For Lorenzaccio had thought of stroke in the open
“But uncertain (for the Duke went never unguarded) ...
“And would have thrown him from wall
“Yet feared this might not end him, or lest Alessandro
“Know not by whom death came,
O si credesse
“If when the foot slipped, when death came upon him,
“Lest cousin Duke Alessandro think he had fallen alone
“No friend to aid him in falling.”
Caina attende.
As beneath my feet a lake, was ice in seeming.