Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement.
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Famous Ezra Pound Poems
La Fraisne
I was quite strong-at least they said so-
The young men at the sword-play;
But I have put aside this folly, being gay
In another fashion that more suiteth me.
I have curled ‘mid the boles of the ash wood,
I have hidden my face where the oak
Spread his leaves over me, and the yoke
Of the old ways of men have I cast aside.
By the still pool of Mar-nan-otha
Have I found me a bride
That was a dog-wood tree some syne.
She hath called me from mine old ways
She hath hushed my rancour of council,
Bidding me praise
Naught but the wind that flutters in the leaves.
She hath drawn me from mine old ways,
Till men say that I am mad;
But I have seen the sorrow of men, and am glad,
For I know that the wailing and bitterness are a folly.
And I? I have put aside all folly and all grief.
I wrapped my tears in an ellum leaf
And left them under a stone
And now men call me mad because I have thrown
All folly from me, putting it aside
To leave the old barren ways of men,
Because my bride
Is a pool of the wood, and
Though all men say that I am mad
It is only that I am glad,
Very glad, for my bride hath toward me a great love
That is sweeter than the love of women
That plague and burn and drive one away.
Aie-e! ‘Tis true that I am gay
Quite gay, for I have her alone here
And no man troubleth us.
Once when I was among the young men . . .
And they said I was quite strong, among the young men.
Once there was a woman . . .
. . . but I forget . . . she was . .
… I hope she will not come again.
… I do not remember…..
I think she hurt me once, but . . .
That was very long ago.
I do not like to remember things any more.
I like one little band of winds that blow
In the ash trees here:
For we are quite alone
Here ‘mid the ash trees.
The House Of Splendour
Tis Evanoe’s,
A house not made with hands,
But out somewhere beyond the worldly ways
Her gold is spread, above, around, inwoven;
Strange ways and walls are fashioned out of it.
And I have seen my Lady in the sun,
Her hair was spread about, a sheaf of wings,
And red the sunlight was, behind it all.
And I have seen her there within her house,
With six great sapphires hung along the wall,
Low, panel-shaped, a-level with her knees,
All her robe was woven of pale gold.
There are there many rooms and all of gold,
Of woven walls deep patterned, of email,
Of beaten work; and through the claret stone,
Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light.
Here am I come perforce my love of her,
Behold mine adoration
Maketh me clear, and there are powers in this
Which, played on by the virtues of her soul,
Break down the four-square walls of standing time.
Praise Of Ysolt
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 moonlight calling,
As the 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
Stying ‘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’.
But my soul sent a woman, a woman of the wonder-folk,
A woman as fire upon the pine woods
crying ‘Song, a song’.
As the flame crieth unto the sap.
My song was ablaze with her and she went from me
As flame leaveth the embers so went she unto new forests ‘
And the words were with me
crying ever. ‘Song, a song’.
And I ‘I have no song’,
Till my soul sent a woman as the sun:
Yea as the sun calleth to the seed,
As the spring upon the bough
So is she that cometh, the mother of songs,
She that holdeth the wonder words within her eyes
The words, little elf words
that call ever unto me,
‘Song, a song’.
In vain have I striven with my soul
to teach my soul to bow.
What soul boweth
while in his heart art thou?
Near Perigord
I
You’d have men’s hearts up from the dust
And tell their secrets, Messire Cino,
Rigkt enough? Then read between the lines of Uc St. Circ,
Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale.
Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone:
6Maent, I love you, you have turned me out.
The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes’ hair,
Bel Miral’s stature, the viscountess’ throat,
Set all together, are not worthy of you. . . .’
And all the while you sing out that canzone,
Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac,
One at Chalais, another at Malemort
Hard over Brive for every lady a castle,
Each place strong.
Oh, is it easy enough?
Tairiran held hall in Montaignac,
His brother-in-law was all there was of power
In Perigord, and this good union
Gobbled all the land, and held it later for some hundred years.
And our En Bertrans was in Altafort,
Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife,
As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell
The headless trunk ‘that made its head a lamp’,
For separation wrought out separation,
And he who set the strife between brother and brother
And had his way with the old English king,,
Viced in such torture for the ‘counterpass’.
How would you live, with neighbours set about you
Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochecouart,
Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand;
And you on that great mountain of a palm
Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams,
But one huge back half-covered up with pine,
Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born
The four round towers, four brothers mostly fools
What could he do but play the desperate chess,
And stir old grudges?
‘Pawn your castles, lords!
Let the Jews pay.’
And the great scene
(That, maybe, never happened!)
Beaten at last,
Before the hard old king:
‘Your son, ah, since he died
”My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside
‘In the full flare of grief. Do what you will.’
Take the whole man, and ravel out the story.
He loved this lady in castle Montaignac ?
The castle flanked him he had need of it.
You read to-day, how long the overlords of Perigord,
The Talleyrands, have held the place; it was no transient fiction.
And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme?
And all his net-like thought of new alliance?
Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars.
Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips
Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies.
And Rochecouart can match it, stronger yet,
The very spur’s end, built on sheerest cliff,
And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive,
While Born, his own close purse, his rabbit warren,
His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors,
A-bristle with antennae to feel roads,
To sniff the traffic into Perigord.
And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line,
The ten good miles from there to Maent’s castle,
All of his flank how could he do without her?
And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse?
would he do without her?
‘Papiol,
Go forthright singing Anhes, Cembelins.
There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands;
There is a trellis full of early roses,
And all my heart is bound about with love.
Where am I come with compound flatteries
What doors are open to fine compliment?’
And every one half jealous of Maent?
He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies
Against her; give her pride in them?
Take his own speech, make what you will of it
And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent?
Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war?
Is it an intrigue to run subtly out,
Born of a jongleur’s tongue, freely to pass
Up and about and in and out the land,
Mark him a craftsman and a strategist?
(St. Leider had done as much as Polhonac,
Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.)
Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition,
To sing one thing when your song means another,
‘Et albirar ab lor bordon ‘
Foix’ count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans’ singing?
Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent,
Or war and broken heaumes and politics?
II
End fact. Try fiction. Let us say we see
En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort,
Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light,
Southward toward Montaignac, and he bends at a table
Scribbling, swearing between his teeth; by his left hand
Lie little strips of parchment covered over,
Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos.
Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious?
With a red straggling beard?
And the green cat’s-eye lifts toward Montaignac.
Or take his ‘magnet’ singer setting out,
Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at Chalais
In the vaulted hall,
Or, by a lichened tree at Rochecouart
Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys,
Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening,
Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul . . .
To find her half alone, Montfort away,
And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her,
Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one.
Little enough ?
Or carry him forward. ‘Go through all the courts,
My Magnet,’ Bertrans had said.
We came to Ventadour
In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon,
No one hears save Arrimon Luc D’Esparo
No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments.
Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort,
Rochecouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic,
Malemort, guesses beneath, sends wrord to Cceur-de-Lion:
The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled
About his castle, cattle driven out!
Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered?
And ten years after, or twenty, as you will,
Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus:
The dull round towers encroaching on the field,
The tents tight drawn, horses at tether
Further and out of reach, the purple night,
The crackling of small fires, the bannerets,
The lazy leopards on the largest banner,
Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer’s torch-flare
Melting on steel.
And in the quietest space
They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead;
And we’ve the gossip (skipped six hundred years).
Richard shall die to-morrow leave him there
Talking oftrobar clus with Daniel.
And the ‘best craftsman’ sings out his friend’s song,
Envies its vigour . . . and deplores the technique,
Dispraises his own skill? That’s as you will.
And they discuss the dead man,
Plantagenet puts the riddle: ‘Did he love her?’
And Arnaut parries: ‘Did he love your sister?
True, he has praised her, but in some opinion
He wrote that praise only to show he had
The favour of your party; had been well received.’
‘You knew the man.’
‘You knew the man.’
‘I am an artist, you have tried both metiers.’
‘You were born near him.’
‘Do we know our friends?’
‘Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maent!’
‘Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle?’
End the discussion, Richard goes out next day
And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard,
Pardons the bowman, dies, ,
Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends
‘In sacred odour’ (that’s apocryphal!)
And we can leave the talk till Dante writes:
Surely I saw, and still before my eyes
Goes on that headless trunk, that bears for light
Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair,
And like a swinging lamp that says, ‘Ah me!
I severed men, my head and heart
Ye see here severed, my life’s counterpart.’
Or take En Bertrans?
III
Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere
Poppies and day’s eyes in the green 6mail
Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,
And our two horses had traced out the valleys;
Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars,
In the young days when the deep sky befriended.
And great wings beat above us in the twilight,
And the great wheels in heaven
Bore us together . . . surging . . . and apart . . .
Believing we should meet with lips and hands,
High, high and sure . . . and then the counter-thrust:
‘Why do you love me? Will you always love me?
But I am like the grass, I can not love you.’
Or, ‘Love, and I love and love you,
And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.’
So to this last estrangement, Tairiran!
There shut; up in his castle, Tairiran’s,
She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,
Gone ah, gone untouched, unreachable !
She who could never live save through one person,
She who could never speak save to one person,
And all the rest of her a shifting change,
A broken bundle of mirrors . . . !
In Exitum Cuiusdam
On a certain one’s departure
‘Time’s bitter flood’! Oh, that’s all very well,
But where’s the old friend hasn’t fallen off,
Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped fame?
I know your circle and can fairly tell
What you have kept and what you’ve left behind:
I know my circle and know very well
How many faces I’d have out of mind.
Guido Invites You Thus
Lappo I leave behind and Dante too,
Lo, I would sail the seas with thee alone!
Talk me no love talk, no bought-cheap fiddl’ry,
Mine is the ship and thine the merchandise,
All the blind earth knows not th’emprise
Whereto thou calledst and whereto I call.
Lo, I have seen thee bound about with dreams,
Lo, I have known thy heart and its desire;
Life, all of it, my sea, and all men’s streams
Are fused in it as flames of an altar fire !
Lo, thou hast voyaged not! The ship is mine.’
Sennin Poem By Kakuhaku
The red and green kingfishers
flash between the orchids and clover,
One bird casts its gleam on another.
Green vines hang through the high forest,
They weave a whole roof to the mountain,
The lone man sits with shut speech,
He purrs and pats the clear strings.
He throws his heart up through the sky,
He bites through the flower pistil
and brings up a fine fountain.
The red-pine-tree god looks at him and wonders.
He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin,
He takes ‘Floating Hill’ by the sleeve,
He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin.
But you, you dam’d crowd of gnats,
Can you even tell the age of a turtle?
Sennin Poem By Kakuhaku
The red and green kingfishers
flash between the orchids and clover,
One bird casts its gleam on another.
Green vines hang through the high forest,
They weave a whole roof to the mountain,
The lone man sits with shut speech,
He purrs and pats the clear strings.
He throws his heart up through the sky,
He bites through the flower pistil
and brings up a fine fountain.
The red-pine-tree god looks at him and wonders.
He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin,
He takes ‘Floating Hill’ by the sleeve,
He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin.
But you, you dam’d crowd of gnats,
Can you even tell the age of a turtle?
Phyllidula
Phyllidula is scrawny but amorous,
Thus have the gods awarded her,
That in pleasure she receives more than she can give;
If she does not count this blessed
Let her change her religion.
Marvoil
A poor clerk I, ‘Arnaut the less’ they call me,
And because I have small mind to sit
Day long, long day cooped on a stool
A-jumbling o’ figures for Maitre Jacques Polin,
I ha’ taken to rambling the South here.
The Vicomte of Beziers’s not such a bad lot.
I made rimes to his lady this three year:
Vers and canzone, till that damn’d son of Aragon,
Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging
His helmet at Beziers.
Then came what might come, to wit: three men and one woman,
Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady
Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers,
And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal
To the end that you see, friends:
Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers
Bored to an inch of extinction,
Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier,
Me! in this damn’d inn of Avignon,
Stringing long verse for the Burlatz;
All for one half-bald, knock-knee’d king of the Aragonese,
Alfonso, Quattro, poke-nose.
And if when I am dead
They take the trouble to tear out this wall here,
They’11 know more of Arnaut of Marvoil
Than half his canzoni say of him.
As for will and testament I leave none,
Save this: ‘Vers and canzone to the Countess of Beziers
In return for the first kiss she gave me.’
May her eyes and her cheek be fair
To all men except the King of Aragon,
And may I come’speedily to Beziers
Whither my desire and my dream have preceded me.
O hole in the wall here! be thou my jongleur
As ne’er had I other, and when the wind blows,
Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers,
For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with this parchment,
So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes,
And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly my thought.
Wherefore, O hole in the wall here,
When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow
That I have not the Countess of Beziers
Close in my arms here.
Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment.
O hole in the wall here, be thou my jongleur,
And though thou sighest my sorrow in the wind,
Keep yet my secret in thy breast here;
Even as I keep her image in my heart here.
Paracelsus In Excelsis
Being no longer human, why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see.
Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath-
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace,
And we that are grown formless, rise above-
Fluids intangible that have been men,
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm.’
Satiemus
What if I know thy speeches word by word?
And if thou knew’st I knew them wouldst thou speak?
What if I know thy speeches word by word,
And all the time thou sayest them o’er I said,
‘Lo, one there was who bent her fair bright head,
Sighing as thou dost through the golden speech.’
Or, as our laughters mingle each with each,
As crushed lips take their respite fitfully,
What if my thoughts were turned in their mid reach
Whispering among them, ‘The fair dead
Must know such moments, thinking on the grass;
On how white dogwoods murmured overhead
In the bright glad days!’
How if the low dear sound within thy throat
Hath as faint lute-strings in its dim accord
Dim tales that blind me, running one by one
With times told over as we tell by rote;
What if I know thy laughter word by word
Nor find aught novel in thy merriment ?
Of Jacopo Del Sellaio
This man knew out the secret ways of love,
No man could paint such things who did not know.
And now she’s gone, who was his Cyprian,
And you are here, who are ‘The Isles’ to me.
And here’s the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
Old Idea Of Choan By Rosoriu
I
The narrow streets cut into the wide highway at Choan,
Dark oxen, white horses,
drag on the seven coaches with outriders.
The coaches are perfumed wood,
The jewelled chair is held up at the crossway,
Before the royal lodge:
A glitter of golden saddles, awaiting the princess;
They eddy before the gate of the barons.
The canopy embroidered with dragons
drinks in and casts back the sun.
Evening comes.
The trappings are bordered with mist.
The hundred cords of mist are spread through
and double the trees,
Night birds, and night women,
Spread out their sounds through the gardens.
II
Birds with flowery wing, hovering butterflies
crowd over the thousand gates,
Trees that glitter like jade,
terraces tinged with silver,
The seed of a myriad hues,
A net-work of arbours and passages and covered ways,
Double towers, winged roofs,
border the net-work of ways:
A place of felicitous meeting.
Riu’s house stands out on the sky,
with glitter of colour
As Butei of Kan had made the high golden lotus
to gather his dews,
Before it another house which I do not know:
How shall we know all the friends
whom we meet on strange roadways?
Homage To Sextus Propertius
Jove, be merciful to that unfortunate woman
Or an ornamental death will be held to your debit,
The time is come, the air heaves in torridity,
The dry earth pants against the canicular heat,
But this heat is not the root of the matter:
She did not respect all the gods;
Such derelictions have destroyed other young ladies aforetime,
And what they swore in the cupboard
wind and wave scattered away.
Was Venus exacerbated by the existence of a comparable equal?
Is the ornamental goddess full of envy?
Have you contempted Juno’s Pelasgian temples,
Have you denied Pallas good eyes ?
Or is it my tongue that wrongs you
with perpetual ascription of graces?
There comes, it seems, and at any rate
through perils, (so many) and of a vexed life,
The gentler hour of an ultimate day.
Io mooed the first years with averted head,
And now drinks Nile water like a god,
Ino in her young days fled pellmell out of Thebes,
Andromeda was offered to a sea-serpent
and respectably married to Perseus,
Callisto, disguised as a bear,
wandered through the Arcadian prairies
While a black veil was over her stars,
What if your fates are accelerated,
your quiet hour put forward,
You may find interment pleasing,
You will say that you succumbed to a danger identical,
charmingly identical, with Semele’s,
And believe it, and she also will believe it,
being expert from experience,
And amid all the gloried and storied beauties of Maeonia
There shall be none in a better seat, not
one denying your prestige,
Now you may bear fate’s stroke unperturbed,
Or Jove, harsh as he is, may turn aside your ultimate day.
Old lecher, let not Juno get wind of the matter,
Or perhaps Juno herself will go under,
If the young lady is taken?
There will be, in any case, a stir on Olympus.
Canto XVI
And before hell mouth; dry plain
and two mountains;
On the one mountain, a running form,
and another
In the turn of the hill; in hard steel
The road like a slow screw’s thread,
The angle almost imperceptible,
so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise;
And the running form, naked, Blake,
Shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs,
Howling against the evil,
his eyes rolling,
Whirling like flaming cart-wheels,
and his head held backward to gaze on the evil
As he ran from it,
to be hid by the steel mountain,
And when he showed again from the north side;
his eyes blazing toward hell mouth,
His neck forward,
and like him Peire Cardinal.
And in the west mountain, Il Fiorentino,
Seeing hell in his mirror,
and lo Sordels
Looking on it in his shield;
And Augustine, gazing toward the invisible.
And past them, the criminal
lying in the blue lakes of acid,
The road between the two hills, upward
slowly,
The flames patterned in lacquer, crimen est actio,
The limbo of chopped ice and saw-dust,
And I bathed myself with acid to free myself
of the hell ticks,
Scales, fallen louse eggs.
Palux Laerna,
the lake of bodies, aqua morta,
of limbs fluid, and mingled, like fish heaped in a bin,
and here an arm upward, clutching a fragment of marble,
And the embryos, in flux,
new inflow, submerging,
Here an arm upward, trout, submerged by the eels;
and from the bank, the stiff herbage
the dry nobbled path, saw many known, and unknown,
for an instant;
submerging,
The face gone, generation.
Then light, air, under saplings,
the blue banded lake under æther,
an oasis, the stones, the calm field,
the grass quiet,
and passing the tree of the bough
The grey stone posts,
and the stair of gray stone,
the passage clean-squared in granite:
descending,
and I through this, and into the earth,
patet terra,
entered the quiet air
the new sky,
the light as after a sun-set,
and by their fountains, the heroes,
Sigismundo, and Malatesta Novello,
and founders, gazing at the mounts of their cities.
The plain, distance, and in fount-pools
the nymphs of that water
rising, spreading their garlands,
weaving their water reeds with the boughs,
In the quiet,
and now one man rose from his fountain
and went off into the plain.
Prone in that grass, in sleep;
et j’entendis des voix:…
wall . . . Strasbourg
Galliffet led that triple charge. . . Prussians
and he said [Plarr’s narration]
it was for the honour of the army.
And they called him a swashbuckler.
I didn’t know what it was
But I thought: This is pretty bloody damn fine.
And my old nurse, he was a man nurse, and
He killed a Prussian and he lay in the street
there in front of our house for three days
And he stank. . . . . . .
Brother Percy,
And our Brother Percy…
old Admiral
He was a middy in those days,
And they came into Ragusa
. . . . . . place those men went for the Silk War. . . . .
And they saw a procession coming down through
A cut in the hills, carrying something
The six chaps in front carrying a long thing
on their shoulders,
And they thought it was a funeral,
but the thing was wrapped up in scarlet,
And he put off in the cutter,
he was a middy in those days,
To see what the natives were doing,
And they got up to the six fellows in livery,
And they looked at it, and I can still hear the old admiral,
“Was it? it was
Lord Byron
Dead drunk, with the face of an A y n. . . . . . . .
He pulled it out long, like that:
the face of an a y n . . . . . . . . gel.”
And because that son of a bitch,
Franz Josef of Austria. . . . . .
And because that son of a bitch Napoléon Barbiche…
They put Aldington on Hill 70, in a trench
dug through corpses
With a lot of kids of sixteen,
Howling and crying for their mamas,
And he sent a chit back to his major:
I can hold out for ten minutes
With my sergeant and a machine-gun.
And they rebuked him for levity.
And Henri Gaudier went to it,
and they killed him,
And killed a good deal of sculpture,
And ole T.E.H. he went to it,
With a lot of books from the library,
London Library, and a shell buried ‘em in a dug-out,
And the Library expressed its annoyance.
And a bullet hit him on the elbow
…gone through the fellow in front of him,
And he read Kant in the Hospital, in Wimbledon,
in the original,
And the hospital staff didn’t like it.
And Wyndham Lewis went to it,
With a heavy bit of artillery,
and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse,
And cleaned out most of his company,
and a shell lit on his tin hut,
While he was out in the privy,
and he was all there was left of that outfit.
Windeler went to it,
and he was out in the Ægæan,
And down in the hold of his ship
pumping gas into a sausage,
And the boatswain looked over the rail,
down into amidships, and he said:
Gees! look a’ the Kept’n,
The Kept’n’s a-gettin’ ‘er up.
And Ole Captain Baker went to it,
with his legs full of rheumatics,
So much so he couldn’t run,
so he was six months in hospital,
Observing the mentality of the patients.
And Fletcher was 19 when he went to it,
And his major went mad in the control pit,
about midnight, and started throwing the ‘phone about
And he had to keep him quiet
till abut six in the morning,
And direct that bunch of artillery.
And Ernie Hemingway went to it,
too much in a hurry,
And they buried him for four days.
Et ma foi, vous savez,
tous les nerveux. Non,
Y a une limite; les bêtes, les bêtes ne sont
Pas faites pour ça, c’est peu de chose un cheval.
Les hommes de 34 ans à quatre pattes
qui criaient “maman.” Mais les costauds,
La fin, là à Verdun, n’y avait que ces gros bonshommes
Et y voyaient extrêmement clair.
Qu’est-ce que ça vaut, les généraux, le lieutenant,
on les pèse à un centigramme,
n’y a rien que du bois,
Notr’ capitaine, tout, tout ce qu’il y a de plus renfermé
de vieux polytechnicien, mais solide,
La tête solide. Là, vous savez,
Tout, tout fonctionne, et les voleurs, tous les vices,
Mais les rapaces,
y avait trois dans notre compagnie, tous tués.
Y sortaient fouiller un cadavre, pour rien,
y n’serainet sortis pour rien que ça.
Et les boches, tout ce que vous voulez,
militarisme, et cætera, et cætera.
Tout ça, mais, MAIS,
l’français, i s’bat quand y a mangé.
Mais ces pauvres types
A la fin y s’attaquaient pour manger,
Sans orders, les bêtes sauvages, on y fait
Prisonniers; ceux qui parlaient français disaient:
“Poo quah? Ma foi on attaquait pour manger.”
C’est le corr-ggras, le corps gras,
leurs trains marchaient trois kilomètres à l’heure,
Et ça criait, ça grincait, on l’entendait à cinq kilomètres.
(Ça qui finit la guerre.)
Liste officielle des morts 5,000,000.
I vous dit, bè, voui, tout sentait le pétrole.
Mais, Non! je l’ai engueulé.
Je lui ai dit: T’es un con! T’a raté la guerre.
O voui! tous les homes de goût, y conviens,
Tout ça en arrière.
Mais un mec comme toi!
C’t homme, un type comme ça!
Ce qu’il aurait pu encaisser!
Il était dans une fabrique.
What, burying squad, terrassiers, avec leur tête
en arrière, qui regardaient comme ça,
On risquait la vie pour un coup de pelle,
Faut que ça soit bein carré, exact…
Dey vus a bolcheviki dere, und dey dease him:
Looka vat youah Trotzsk is done, e iss
madeh deh zhamefull beace!!
“He iss madeh de zhamefull beace, iss he?
“He is madeh de zhamevull beace?
“A Brest-Litovsk, yess? Aint yuh herd?
“He vinneh de vore.
“De droobs iss released vrom de eastern vront, yess?
“Un venn dey getts to deh vestern vront, iss it
“How many getts dere?
“And dose doat getts dere iss so full off revolutions
“Venn deh vrench is come dhru, yess,
“Dey say, “Vot?” Un de posch say:
“Aint yeh heard? Say, ve got a rheffolution.”
That’s the trick with a crowd,
Get ‘em into the street and get ‘em moving.
And all the time, there were people going
Down there, over the river.
There was a man there talking,
To a thousand, just a short speech, and
Then move ‘em on. And he said:
Yes, these people, they are all right, they
Can do everything, everything except act;
And go an’ hear ‘em but when they are through
Come to the bolsheviki…
And when it broke, there was the crowd there,
And the cossacks, just as always before,
But one thing, the cossacks said:
“Pojalouista.”
And that got round in the crowd,
And then a lieutenant of infantry
Ordered ‘em to fire into the crowd,
in the square at the end of the Nevsky,
In front of the Moscow station,
And they wouldn’t,
And he pulled his sword on a student for laughing,
And killed him,
And a cossack rode out of his squad
On the other side of the square
And cut down the lieutenant of infantry
And there was the revolution…
as soon as they named it.
And you can’t make ‘em,
Nobody knew it was coming. They were all ready, the old gang,
Guns on the top of the post-office and the palace,
But none of the leaders knew it was coming.
And there were some killed at the barracks,
But that was between the troops.
So we used to hear it at the opera
That they wouldn’t be under Haig;
and that the advance was beginning;
That it was going to begin in a week.
Canto XXXVI
A Lady asks me
I speak in season
She seeks reason for an affect, wild often
That is so proud he hath Love for a name
Who denys it can hear the truth now
Wherefore I speak to the present knowers
Having no hope that low-hearted
Can bring sight to such reason
Be there not natural demonstration
I have no will to try proof-bringing
Or say where it hath birth
What is its virtu and power
Its being and every moving
Or delight whereby ‘tis called “to love”
Or if man can show it to sight.
Where memory liveth,
it takes its state
Formed like a diafan from light on shade
Which shadow cometh of Mars and remaineth
Created, having a name sensate,
Custom of the soul,
will from the heart;
Cometh from a seen form which being understood
Taketh locus and remaining in the intellect possible
Wherein hath he neither weight nor still-standing,
Descendeth not by quality but shineth out
Himself his own effect unendingly
Not in delight but in the being aware
Nor can he leave his true likeness otherwhere.
He is not vertu but cometh of that perfection
Which is so postulate not by the reason
But ‘tis felt, I say.
Beyond salvation, holdeth his judging force
Deeming intention to be reason’s peer and mate,
Poor in discernment, being thus weakness’ friend
Often his power cometh on death in the end,
Be it withstayed
and so swinging counterweight.
Not that it were natural opposite, but only
Wry’d a bit from the perfect,
Let no man say love cometh from chance
Or hath not established lordship
Holding his power even though
Memory hath him no more.
Cometh he to be
when the will
From overplus
Twisteth out of natural measure,
Never adorned with rest Moveth he changing colour
Either to laugh or weep
Contorting the face with fear
resteth but a little
Yet shall ye see of him That he is most often
With folk who deserve him
And his strange quality sets sighs to move
Willing man look into that forméd trace in his mind
And with such uneasiness as rouseth the flame.
Unskilled can not form his image,
He himself moveth not, drawing all to his stillness,
Neither turneth about to seek his delight
Nor yet to see out proving
Be it so great or so small.
He draweth likeness and hue from like nature
So making pleasure more certain in seeming
Nor can stand hid in such nearness,
Beautys be darts tho’ not savage
Skilled from such fear a man follows
Deserving spirit, that pierceth.
Nor is he known from his face
But taken in the white light that is allness
Toucheth his aim
Who heareth, seeth not form
But is led by its emanation
Being divided, set out from colour,
Disjunct in mid darkness
Grazeth the light, one moving by other,
Being divided, divided from all falsity
Worthy of trust
From him alone mercy proceedeth.
Go, song, surely thou mayest
Whither it please thee
For so art thou ornate that thy reasons
Shall be praised from thy understanders,
With others hast thou no will to make company.
“Called thrones, balascio or topaze”
Eriugina was not understood in his time
“which explains, perhaps, the delay in condemning him”
And they went looking for Manicheans
And found, so far as I can make out, no Manicheans
So they dug for, and damned Scotus Eriugina
“Authority comes from right reason,
never the other way on”
Hence the delay in condemning him
Aquinas head down in a vacuum,
Aristotle which way in a vacuum?
Sacrum, sacrum, inluminatio coitu.
Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana
of a castle named Goito.
“Five castles!
“Five castles!”
(king giv’ him five castles)
“And what the hell do I know about dye-works?!”
His Holiness has written a letter:
“CHARLES the Mangy of Anjou….
..way you treat your men is a scandal….”
Dilectis miles familiaris…castra Montis Odorisii
Montis Sancti Silvestri pallete et pile…
In partibus Thetis….vineland
land tilled
the land incult
pratis nemoribus pascuis
with legal jurisdiction
his heirs of both sexes,
…sold the damn lot six weeks later,
Sordellus de Godio.
Quan ben m’albir e mon ric pensamen.
