Part 1
LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND
LUSTRA
OF
EZRA POUND
_Definition_--“LUSTRUM: an offering for the sins of the whole people, made by the censors at the expiration of their five years of office.”
_Elementary Latin Dictionary of Charlton T. Lewis._
LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET M CM XVI
Certain of these poems have appeared in _Poetry_, _Blast_, _Poetry and Drama_, _Smart Set_, and _Others_, to the editors of which magazines the author wishes to make due acknowledgment.
E. P.
V. L.
_Cui dono lepidum novum libellum._
CONTENTS
PAGE
Tenzone 9
The Condolence 10
The Garret 11
The Garden 12
Ortus 13
Salutation 14
The Spring 15
Albâtre 16
Causa 16
A Pact 17
Surgit Fama 18
Preference 19
Dance Figure 20
April 22
Gentildonna 22
The Rest 23
Les Millwin 24
Further Instructions 25
A Song of the Degrees 26
Ite 27
Dum Capitolium Scandet 27
καλὀν 27
The Study in Aesthetics 28
The Bellaires 29
Salvationists 32
Arides 33
The Bath Tub 33
Amitiés 34
To Dives 35
Ladies 36
Coda 37
Ancora 38
“Dompna pois de me no’us cal” 39
The Coming of War: Actaeon 42
After Ch’u Yuan 43
Liu Ch’e 43
Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord 44
Ts’ai Chi’h 44
In a Station of the Metro 45
Alba 45
Heather 45
The Faun 46
Pervigilium 46
The Encounter 47
Tempora 47
Black Slippers: Bellotti 48
Society 48
Image from D’Orleans 49
Papyrus 49
“Ione, Dead the Long Year” 50
Shop Girl 50
To Formianus’ Young Lady Friend 51
Tame Cat 52
L’Art, 1910 52
Simulacra 53
Women before a Shop 53
Epilogue 54
The Social Order 55
The Tea Shop 56
Epitaphs 57
Our Contemporaries 57
Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic 58
The Three Poets 58
The Gipsy 59
The Game of Chess 60
Provincia Deserta 61
CATHAY
Song of the Bowmen of Shu 67
The Beautiful Toilet 69
The River Song 70
The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter 73
The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance 75
Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin 76
Lament of the Frontier Guard 78
Exile’s Letter 80
Four Poems of Departure
Separation on the River Kiang 85
Taking Leave of a Friend 85
Leave-taking near Shoku 86
The City of Choan 87
South Folk in Cold Country 88
Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku 89
A Ballad of the Mulberry Road 90
Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu 91
To-Em-Mei’s “The Unmoving Cloud” 93
Near Perigord 95
Villanelle: The Psychological Hour 104
Dans un Omnibus de Londres 107
To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers 109
Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus 113
Fish and the Shadow 115
LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND
Tenzone
Will people accept them? (i.e. these songs). As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion), Already they flee, howling in terror.
Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes? Their virgin stupidity is untemptable. I beg you, my friendly critics, Do not set about to procure me an audience.
I mate with my free kind upon the crags; the hidden recesses Have heard the echo of my heels, in the cool light, in the darkness.
The Condolence
_A mis soledades voy,_ _De mis soledades vengo,_ _Porque por andar conmigo_ _Mi bastan mis pensamientos._ Lope de Vega.
O my fellow sufferers, songs of my youth, A lot of asses praise you because you are “virile,” We, you, I! We are “Red Bloods”! Imagine it, my fellow sufferers-- Our maleness lifts us out of the ruck, Who’d have foreseen it?
O my fellow sufferers, we went out under the trees, We were in especial bored with male stupidity. We went forth gathering delicate thoughts, Our “_fantastikon_” delighted to serve us. We were not exasperated with women, for the female is ductile.
And now you hear what is said to us: We are compared to that sort of person Who wanders about announcing his sex As if he had just discovered it. Let us leave this matter, my songs, and return to that which concerns us.
The Garret
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.
The Garden
_En robe de parade._ Samain.
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anæmia.
And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like someone to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.
Ortus
How have I laboured? How have I not laboured To bring her soul to birth, To give these elements a name and a centre!
She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid. She has no name, and no place. How have I laboured to bring her soul into separation; To give her a name and her being!
Surely you are bound and entwined, You are mingled with the elements unborn; I have loved a stream and a shadow.
I beseech you enter your life. I beseech you learn to say “I” When I question you: For you are no part, but a whole; No portion, but a being.
Salutation
O generation of the thoroughly smug and thoroughly uncomfortable, I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun, I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am; And the fish swim in the lake and do not even own clothing.
The Spring
Cydonian spring with her attendant train, Maelids and water-girls, Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace, Throughout this sylvan place Spreads the bright tips, And every vine-stock is Clad in new brilliancies. And wild desire Falls like black lightning. O bewildered heart, Though every branch have back what last year lost, She, who moved here amid the cyclamen, Moves only now a clinging tenuous ghost.
Albâtre
This lady in the white bath-robe which she calls a peignoir Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend, And the delicate white feet of her little white dog Are not more delicate than she is, Nor would Gautier himself have despised their contrasts in whiteness As she sits in the great chair Between the two indolent candles.
Causa
I join these words for four people, Some others may overhear them, O world, I am sorry for you, You do not know these four people.
A Pact
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.
Surgit Fama
There is a truce among the gods, Korè is seen in the North Skirting the blue-gray sea In gilded and russet mantle.
The corn has again its mother and she, Leuconoë, That failed never women, Fails not the earth now.
The tricksome Hermes is here; He moves behind me Eager to catch my words, Eager to spread them with rumour; To set upon them his change Crafty and subtle; To alter them to his purpose; But do thou speak true, even to the letter:
“Once more in Delos, once more is the altar a-quiver. Once more is the chant heard. Once more are the never abandoned gardens Full of gossip and old tales.”
Preference
It is true that you say the gods are more use to you than fairies, But for all that I have seen you on a high, white, noble horse, Like some strange queen in a story.
It is odd that you should be covered with long robes and trailing tendrils and flowers; It is odd that you should be changing your face and resembling some other woman to plague me; It is odd that you should be hiding yourself In the cloud of beautiful women who do not concern me.
And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind? You will say that I deserve this.
Dance Figure
_For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee_
Dark eyed, O woman of my dreams, Ivory sandaled, 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.
April
RIGHT _Nympharum membra disjecta._
Three spirits came to me And drew me apart To where the olive boughs Lay stripped upon the ground: Pale carnage beneath bright mist.
Gentildonna
She passed and left no quiver in the veins, who now Moving among the trees, and clinging in the air she severed, Fanning the grass she walked on then, endures:
Grey olive leaves beneath a rain-cold sky.
The Rest
O helpless few in my country, O remnant enslaved!
Artists broken against her, A-stray, lost in the villages, Mistrusted, spoken-against,
Lovers of beauty, starved, Thwarted with systems, Helpless against the control;
You who can not wear yourselves out By persisting to successes, You who can only speak, Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration;
You of the finer sense, Broken against false knowledge, You who can know at first hand, Hated, shut in, mistrusted:
Take thought: I have weathered the storm, I have beaten out my exile.
Les Millwin
The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet. The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwins Were seen lying along the upper seats Like so many unused boas.
The turbulent and undisciplined host of art students-- The rigorous deputation from “Slade”-- Was before them. With arms exalted, with fore-arms Crossed in great futuristic X’s, the art students Exulted, they beheld the splendours of _Cleopatra_.
And the little Millwins beheld these things; With their large and anæmic eyes they looked out upon this configuration.
Let us therefore mention the fact, For it seems to us worthy of record.
Further Instructions
Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions, Let us express our envy of 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 in the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops You do next to nothing at all.
You do not even express our inner nobilities, 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.
A Song of the Degrees
I
Rest me with Chinese colours, For I think the glass is evil.
II
The wind moves above the wheat-- With a silver crashing, A thin war of metal.
I have known the golden disc, I have seen it melting above me. I have known the stone-bright place, The hall of clear colours.
III
O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours! O light bound and bent in, O soul of the captive, Why am I warned? Why am I sent away? Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust? O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold! O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence!
Ite
Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant, Move among the lovers of perfection alone. Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light And take your wounds from it gladly.
Dum Capitolium Scandet
How many will come after me singing as well as I sing, none better; Telling the heart of their truth as I have taught them to tell it; Fruit of my seed, O my unnameable children.
Know then that I loved you from afore-time, Clear speakers, naked in the sun, untrammelled.
To καλὀν
Even in my dreams you have denied yourself to me And sent me only your handmaids.
The Study in Aesthetics
The very small children in patched clothing, Being smitten with an unusual wisdom, Stopped in their play as she passed them And cried up from their cobbles: _Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’ è be’a!_[A]
But three years after this I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know-- For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli;
And there had been a great catch of sardines, And his elders Were packing them in the great wooden boxes For the market in Brescia, and he Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish And getting in both of their ways; And in vain they commanded him to _sta fermo!_ And when they would not let him arrange The fish in the boxes He stroked those which were already arranged, Murmuring for his own satisfaction This identical phrase: _Ch’ è be’a._
And at this I was mildly abashed.
[A] _Bella._
The Bellaires
RIGHT _Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen_ _Mach’ ich die kleinen Lieder._
The good Bellaires Do not understand the conduct of this world’s affairs. In fact they understood them so badly That they have had to cross the Channel.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, five judges and three proctors of the King, Together with the respective wives, husbands, sisters and heterogeneous connections of the good Bellaires, Met to discuss their affairs; But the good Bellaires have so little understood their affairs That now there is no one at all Who can understand any affair of theirs. Yet Fourteen hunters still eat in the stables of The good Squire Bellaire; But these may not suffer attainder, For they may not belong to the good Squire Bellaire But to his wife. On the contrary, if they do not belong to his wife, He will plead A “freedom from attainder” For twelve horses and also for twelve boarhounds From Charles the Fourth; And a further freedom for the remainder Of horses, from Henry the Fourth. But the judges, Being free of mediæval scholarship, Will pay no attention to this, And there will be only the more confusion, Replevin, estoppel, espavin and what not.
Nine lawyers, four counsels, etc., Met to discuss their affairs, But the sole result was bills From lawyers to whom no one was indebted, And even the lawyers Were uncertain who was supposed to be indebted to them.
Wherefore the good Squire Bellaire Resides now at Agde and Biaucaire. To Carcassonne, Pui, and Alais He fareth from day to day, Or takes the sea air Between Marseilles And Beziers.
And for all this I have considerable regret, For the good Bellaires Are very charming people.
Salvationists
I
Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection-- We shall get ourselves rather disliked.
II
Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect The very excellent term _Rusticus_. Let us apply it in all its opprobrium To those to whom it applies. And you may decline to make them immortal. For we shall consider them and their state In delicate Opulent silence.
III
Come, my songs, Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities-- Beginning with Mumpodorus; And against this sea of vulgarities-- Beginning with Nimmim; And against this sea of imbeciles-- All the Bulmenian literati.
Arides
The bashful Arides Has married an ugly wife, He was bored with his manner of life, Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as Well do this as anything else.
Saying within his heart, “I am no use to myself, Let her, if she wants me, take me.” He went to his doom.
The Bath Tub
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
Amitiés
RIGHT _Old friends the most._ W. B. Y.
I
_To one, on returning certain years after._
You wore the same quite correct clothing, You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs, You had the same old air of condescension Mingled with a curious fear That I, myself, might have enjoyed them.
_Te voilà, mon Bourrienne_, you also shall be immortal.
II
_To another._
And we say good-bye to you also, For you seem never to have discovered That your relationship is wholly parasitic; Yet to our feasts you bring neither Wit, nor good spirits, nor the pleasing attitudes Of discipleship.
III
But you, _bos amic_, we keep on, For to you we owe a real debt: In spite of your obvious flaws, You once discovered a moderate chop-house.
IV
_Iste fuit vir incultus,_ _Deo laus, quod est sepultus,_ _Vermes habent eius vultum_ _A-a-a-a--A-men._ _Ego autem jovialis_ _Gaudero contubernalis_ _Cum jocunda femina._
To Dives
Who am I to condemn you, O Dives, I who am as much embittered With poverty As you are with useless riches?
Ladies
_Agathas_
Four and forty lovers had Agathas in the old days, All of whom she refused; And now she turns to me seeking love, And her hair also is turning.
_Young Lady_