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7.28: 7.29 Pound, Ezra. Selected Poems (1885-1972)

  • Page ID
    127582
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    In a Station of the Metro (1913)

    The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
    Petals on a wet, black bough.

    The Sea of Glass (1917)

    I looked and saw a sea

    roofed over with rainbows,

    In the midst of each

    two lovers met and departed;

    Then the sky was full of faces

    with gold glories behind them.

    The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter (1917)

    a translation of Li Bai's work

    While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
    I 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 Chokan:
    Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

    At fourteen I married My Lord you.
    I never laughed, being bashful.
    Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
    Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

    At fifteen I stopped scowling,
    I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
    Forever and forever and forever.
    Why should I climb the lookout?

    At sixteen you departed,
    You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
    And you have been gone five months.
    The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
    You dragged your feet when you went out.
    By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
    Too deep to clear them away!
    The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
    The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
    Over the grass in the West garden --
    They hurt me.
    I grow older.
    If you are coming down through the narrows of the river,
    Please let me know beforehand,
    And I will come out to meet you
    As far as Cho-fo-Sa.

    • All of these works are in the public domain black and white tag indicating the work is in the public domain

    This page titled 7.28: 7.29 Pound, Ezra. Selected Poems (1885-1972) is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative) .

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