Posthumous Cantos by Pound, Ezra -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Page Contents Introduction Note on the English Edition Chronology I Three Cantos: London, 1915–1917

Hang it all, there can be but one ‘Sordello’! Leave Casella Another’s a half-cracked fellow – John Heydon ‘What do I mean by all this clattering rumble?’ When you find that feminine contact What’s poetry?

II Paris, 1920–1922

And So shu stirred in the sea Sudden gift of the stranger Dido choked up with tears for dead Sicheus By the arena, you, Thomas amics, Galla Placidia, and the Roman

III Rapallo and Venice, 1928–1937

the new shoots rise by the altar irritable and unstable ‘Spent yesterday drawing a grasshopper’ ‘From this grotto’ A dangle of fishermen’s lanthorns SHINES in the mind of heaven GOD colla coda aguzza is burried the great financier, Lawvi or Levi while they were discussing the former possibility Lost sense of partaggio, of sharing, for fellowship In their pageantry and their pride they were 40 Das endlich eine wirklicheVerständigung Work is not a commodity. No one can eat it

IV Voices of War, 1940–45

1940 as against the sound of the olive mill But here in Tigullio as at Aquila with a hundred heads round the fountain Washed in the Kiang & Han river To attract the spirits by the beauty of jade saying: O Kat based upon reason for which the wind is quiet With a white flash of wings over the dawn light The holiness of the lord has a blister So that in August, of the year ex–XXI The cat stars have shut one eye Ub. – Maderno, and there was calm in the stillness 360 thousand and sorrow, sorrow like rain So that he put up a saw mill, and they took him m’apparve in quel triedro ERIGENA

V Italian Drafts, 1944–1945

Accade ogni mezzo secolo una meraviglia [Every half century a marvel occurs] Ripresero allora i dolci suoni [Then began again the sweet sounds] In un triedro dell’oliveto mi apparve [In a triedro of the olive grove she appeared to me] 14 Jan [14 Jan] Dove la salita scende e fa triedro [Where the path descends and makes a triedro] Mai con codardi (codini) sarà l’arte monda [Never with cowards (fogies) will art be mended] Ogni beato porta con sé il cielo [Every blessed soul carries along with it the heavenly sphere] Nel periplo che fa il vostro sole [In the periplum that your sun makes] e i fiocchi giaccion e fondon [and the snowflakes lie and melt] Com’è ch’io sento le vetuste voci [How is it that I hear the ancient voices] Se in febbraio il freddo rilascia la morsa [If in February the cold relaxes its bite]

VI Pisa, 1945

a quando? Ed ascoltando al leggier mormorio Yet from my tomb such flame of love arise Night rain and a Biddle sky

VII Prosaic Verses, 1945–1960

and my gt/ aunt’s third husband Ian had felt it: ‘blown to pieces?’ ‘aint no son of a bitch can help me’ ‘one god and Mahomet’ stamped by Roger of Sicily John Heydon, the signatures ‘daily exercise or more power than any President’ The EMPEROR ploughed his furrow and his wife for a word / for the mistranslation of XREIA L’arif est gai, de bonne humeur, souriant Old Peters after ’48 that was novis, nova remedia Till Di Marzio cita Out of Earth into tree And might be lost if I do not record them the madness & cancer are nothing

VIII Lines for Olga, 1962–1972

& the grasshopper was not yet dead on his stalk The gondolas dying in their sewers and as to why this timing? flood & flame Olga’s name being courage And there was nothing but water melon

Notes Index Copyright