Chapters 17
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1 Song of the Bowmen of Shu 2:24
Song of the Bowman of Shoe, from Cathay by Ezra Pound. Redful LibriVox.org by Alan Drake.
Here we are, picking the first fern shoots and saying, When shall we get back to our country? We are here because we have the Kenan for our foemen. We have no comfort because of these Mongols. We grub the soft fern shoots. When anyone says return, the others are full of sorrow. Sorrowful minds. Sorrow is strong. We are hungry and thirsty. Our defense is not yet made sure. No one can let his friend return. We grub the old fern stalks. We say, will we be let to go back in October? There is no ease in royal affairs. We have no comfort. Our sorrow is bitter, but we would not return to our company. What flower has come into blossom? Whose chariot? The generals. Horses, his horses even, are tired. They were strong.
We have no rest. Three battles a month. By heaven, his horses are tired. The generals are on them. The soldiers are by them. The horses are well trained. The generals have ivory arrows and quivers ornamented with fish skin. The enemy is swift. We must be careful. When we set out, the willows were drooping with spring. We come back in the snow. We go slowly. We are hungry and thirsty. Our mind is full of sorrow. Who will know our grief?
End of poem by Buno. Reputedly, 1100 B. C.
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2 The Beautiful Toilet 1:07
The Beautiful Toilet Blue Blue is the grass above the river, And the willows have overfilled the close garden, And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth, White, white of face, Hesitates, passing the door. Slender, she puts forth a slender hand. And she was a courtesan in the old days, and she has married a sot, who now goes drunkenly out, and leaves her too much alone.
End of poem by Mei Sheng, B. C. One Forty.
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3 The River Song 3:19
The River Song by Ezra Pound.
This boat is of chateau-wood, and its gunwales a cut magnolia. Musicians with jeweled flutes and with pipes of gold fill full the sides in rows, and our wine is rich for a thousand cups. We carry singing girls, drift with the drifting water. Yet Senin needs a yellow stork for a charger, and all our seamen would follow the white gulls or ride them. Kutsu's prose song hangs with the sun and moon. King So's terraced palace is now but barren hill. But I draw pen on this barge, causing the five peaks to tremble. And I have joy in these words, like the joy of blue islands. If glory could last forever, then the waters of Han would flow northward. And I have moped in the Emperor's garden, awaiting an order to write.
I looked at the dragon-pond, with its willow-colored water just reflecting the sky's tinge, and heard the five-scored nightingales aimlessly singing. The eastern wind brings the green color into our island grasses at Ye-shu. The purple house and the crimson are full of spring softness. South of the pond, the willow tips are half blue and bluer. Their cords tangle in mist against the brocade-like palace. Vine strings, a hundred feet long, hang down from the carved railings, and high over the willows The fine birds sing to each other and listen, crying, Kuan, Kuan, for the early wind and the feel of it. The wind bundles itself into a bluish cloud and wanders off. Over a thousand gates, over a thousand doors are the sounds of spring singing, and the emperor is at Koh.
Five clouds hang aloft. Bright on the purple sky. The Imperial Guards come forth from the Golden House with their armor gleaming. The Emperor in his jeweled car goes out to inspect his flowers. He goes out to Ho-Ri to look at the wing-flapping storks. He returns by way of Se-Rak to hear the new nightingales. For the gardens of Joe Run are full of new nightingales. Their sound is mixed in this flute. Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.
by Rehaku. 8th century AD.
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4 The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter 2:13
The River Merchant's Wife, a letter by Ezra Pound.
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 Kutoyan, 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 Kjong, please let me know beforehand. I will come out to meet you as far as Chou Fu Sa.
Bai Riha Ku.
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5 Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin 2:30
March has come to the bridgehead. Peach boughs and apricot boughs hang over a thousand gates. At morning there are flowers to cut the heart, and evening drives them on the eastward-flowing waters. Petals are on the gone waters and on the going, and on the back-swirling eddies. But today's men are not the men of the old days, though they hang in the same way over the bridge rail. The sea's color moves at the dawn, and the princes still stand in rows about the throne, and the moon still falls over the portals of Sai Go Yo, and clings to the walls and the gate-top. With head-gear glittering against the cloud and sun, the lords go forth from the court and into far borders. They ride upon dragon-like horses, upon horses with head-trappings of yellow metal, and the streets make way for their passage.
Haughty their passing, haughty their steps as they go into great banquets, To high halls and curious food, to the perfumed air and girls dancing, to clear flutes and clear singing, to the dance of seventy couples, to the mad chase through the gardens. Night and day are given over to pleasure, and they think it will last a thousand autumns, unwearying autumns. For them the yellow dogs howl portents in vain. And what are they compared to the lady Ryo Kushu that was of hate? Who among them is a man like Han Rei, who departed alone with his mistress, with her hair unbound, and he his own skiff's man?
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6 The Jewel Stair's Grievance 1:21
The jeweled steps are already quite white with dew. It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings, and I let down the crystal curtain and watch the moon through the clear autumn.
End of poem by Rehaku. Note Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant, who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early. For the dew has not only whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.
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7 Lament of the Frontier Guard 2:03
By the north gate the wind blows full of sand. Lonely from the beginning of time until now. Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn. I climb the towers and towers to watch out the barbarous land. Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert. But there is no wall left to this village, bones white with a thousand frosts, high heaps covered with trees and grass. Who brought this to pass? Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? Who has brought the army with drums and with kettledrums? Barbarous kings! A gracious spring turned to blood-ravenous autumn, a turmoil of war-mens spread over the Middle Kingdom, three hundred and sixty thousand.
And sorrow, sorrow like rain. Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning. Desolate, desolate fields. And no children of warfare upon them, no longer the men for offense and defense. Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the north gate? With Rehaku's name forgotten, and we guardsmen fed to the tigers.
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8 Exile's Letter 5:54
Exiles Letter by Ezra Pound. Read for LibriVox.org by Allan Davis Drake. July 17th, 2006, in Long Branch, New Jersey. PaintedRiceCakes.org.
From the Chinese of Li Po, usually considered the greatest poet of China, written by him while in exile about Seven Sixty A.D., To the hereditary war-counselor of Shou, recollecting former companionship.
So-kin of Raku Ho, ancient friend, I now remember that you built me a special tavern by the south side of the bridge at Ten Shin. With yellow gold and white jewels we paid for the songs and laughter, and we were drunk for month after month. Forgetting the kings and princes. Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west border, and with them, and with you especially, there was nothing at cross-purpose. And they made nothing of sea-crossing or mountain-crossing. If only they could be of that fellowship. And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret. And then I was sent off to South Way, smothered in laurel groves, and you to the north of Raku Hoku, till we had nothing but thoughts and memories between us.
And when separation had come to its worst, we met and traveled together into Sen Go, through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters, into a valley of a thousand bright flowers, that was the first valley, and on into ten thousand valleys, full of voices and pine-winds. With silver harness and reins of gold prostrating themselves on the ground, out came the east of Khan Foreman and his company, and there came also the true man of Shi-Yo to meet me, playing on a jewelled mouth-organ. In the storied houses of San Kho, they gave us more Sennin music, many instruments like the sound of young Phoenix broods, and the foreman of Kang Chu, drunk, danced because his long sleeves wouldn't keep still, with the music playing.
And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap. And my spirit so high, that it was all over the heavens. And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars or rain. I had to be off to So, far away over the waters, and you back to your river-bridge. And your father, who was brave as a leopard, was governor of Hay Shoe, and put down the barbarian rabble. And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance, and what with broken wheels and so on, I wouldn't say it wasn't hard going, over roads twisted like sheep's guts. And I was still going late in the year, in the cutting wind from the north, and thinking how little you cared for the cost, and you caring enough to pay it.
Then what a reception! Red jade cups, foods well set, on a blue jeweled table, and I was drunk, and had no thought of returning, and you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle, to the dynastic temple, with a water about it clear as blue jade, with boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums, with ripples like dragon scales going grass-green on the water. Pleasure lasting, with courtesans going and coming without hindrance, with the willow flakes falling like snow, and the vermillion girls getting drunk about sunset, and the waters a hundred feet deep reflecting green eyebrows, eyebrows painted green or a fine sight in young moonlight, gracefully painted, and the girls singing back at each other, dancing in transparent brocade.
And the wind lifting the song and interrupting it, tossing it up under the clouds. And all this comes to an end, and it is not again to be met with. I went up to the court for examination, tried La You's luck, offered the Chou You song, and got no promotion, and went back to the East Mountain, white-headed. And once again we met, later, at the South Bridge Head. And then the crowd broke up. You went north to San Pallas, and if you ask how I regretted the parting, it is like the flowers falling on spring's edge, confused, whirled in a tangle. What's the use of talking? And there is no end of talking. There is no end of things in the heart. I call in the boy, have him sit on my knees to write and seal this, and I send it a thousand miles.
Thinking. Translated by Ezra Pound from the Notes of the Late Fenelrosa and the Decipherings of the Professors Mori and Araga.
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9 Four Poems of Departure 2:48
Light rain is on the light dust. The willows of the inn-yard will be going greener and greener. But you, sir, had better take wine ere your departure, For you will have no friends about you When you come to the gates of Go.
Separation on the River Kjong Kojin goes west from Ko Kaku Row. The smoke flowers are blurred over the river. His lone sail blots the far sky, and now I see only the river. The Long Keong Reaching Heaven Taking Leave of a Friend Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them. Here we must make separation, And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating white cloud, sunset like the parting of old acquaintances who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing.
Taking Leave Near Shoukou Sanso, king of Shoukou, built roads.
They say the roads of Sanso are steep, sheer as the mountains. The walls rise in a man's face. Clouds grow out of the hill at its horse's bridle. Sweet trees are on the paved way of the Shin. Their trunks burst through the paving. And freshets are bursting their ice in the midst of Shoku, a proud city. Men's fates are already set. There is no need of asking diviners.
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10 The City of Choan 1:16
The city of Chouan by Ezra Powne.
The Phoenix are at play on their terrace.
The Phoenix are gone. The river flows on alone. Flowers and grass cover over the dark path where lay the dynastic house of the Go. The bright cloth and bright caps of Shin are now the base of old hills.
The three mountains fall through the far heaven. The Isle of White Heron splits the two streams apart. Now the high clouds cover the sun, and I cannot see Chowan afar, and I am sad.
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11 South-Folk In Cold Country 1:26
South Folk in Cold Country by Ezra Pound.
The die-horse neighs against the bleak wind of Etsu. The birds of Etsu have no love for N in the North. Emotion is born out of habit. Yesterday we went out of the wild goose gate. Today, from the Dragon Pen. Surprised. Desert Turmoil. Sea Sun. Flying Snow Bewilders the Barbarian Heaven. Lice swarms like ants over our accoutrements. Mind and spirit drive on the feathery banners. Hard fight gets no reward. Loyalty is hard to explain. Who will be sorry for General Reshogu, the swift-moving, whose white head is lost for this province?
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12 Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku 1:31
Sun and Poem by Kakuhaku. From Cathay by Ezra Pound. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis-Drake of Long Branch, New Jersey.
The red and green kingfishers flash between the orchards 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 pistol, 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 Senen. He takes floating hill by the sleeve. He clasps his hand on the back of the great water-sennin. But you, you damned crowd of gnats, can you even tell the age of a turtle?
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13 A Ballad of the Mulberry Tree 1:30
A Ballad of the Mulberry Road, from Cathay, by Ezra Pound.
The sun rises in the southeast corner of things, to look on the tall house of the Shin, for they have a daughter named Rafu, pretty girl. She made the name for herself, Gauze Vale, For she feeds mulberries to silkworms. She gets them by the south wall of the town. With green strings she makes the warp of her basket. She makes the shoulder straps of her basket from the boughs of the katsura, and she piles her hair up on the left side of her hairpiece. Her earrings are made of pearl. Her underskirt is of green patterned silk. Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple. And when men going by look at Rafu, they set down their burdens. They stand and twirl their moustaches.
From a very early manuscript of Fenelosa.
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14 Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu 2:18
Old Idea of Chowan. 1. The narrow streets cut into the wide highway at Chowan. Dark oxen, white horses, drag on the seven coaches without riders. The coaches, a perfumed wood. The jeweled chair is held up at the crossway before the royal lodge. A glitter of golden saddles awaiting the princes. They eddy before the gate of the barrens. The canopy embroidered with dragons drinks in and casts back the sun. Evening comes. The trappings are boarded 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. 2. 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 network of aubors and passages and covered ways. Double towers, winged roofs, border the network of ways. A place of felicitous meeting. Ryu's house stands out on the sky with glitter of color. As Butei of Kahn had made the high golden lotus to gather his dues. Before it another house, which I do not know. How shall we know all the friends whom we meet on strange roadways?
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15 To Em-Mei's : The Unmoving Cloud 2:30
Toe n' May's The Unmoving Cloud Wet springtime, says Toe m' May, Wet spring in the garden. From Cathay by Ezra Pound. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake.
One. The clouds have gathered and gathered. And the rain falls and falls. The eight ply of the heavens are all folded into one darkness, and the wide, flat road stretches out. I stop in my room towards the east. Quiet, quiet. I pat my new cask of wine. My friends are estranged or far distant. I bow my head and stand still.
Two. Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered. The eight ply of the heavens are darkness. The flat land is turned into river. Wine, wine, here is wine. I drink by my eastern window. I think of talking and man, and no boat, no carriage approaches.
Three. The trees in my east-looking garden are bursting out with new twigs. They try to stir new affections. And men say the sun and moon keep on moving because they can't find a soft seat. The birds flutter to rest in my tree, and I think I have heard them saying, It is not that there are no other men, but we like this fellow the best. But however we long to speak, He cannot know our sorrow.
Dao Yuan Ming, A.D. Three sixty five to four twenty seven.
End of the poem. End of Cathay by Ezra Pound.
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16 The Seafarer 7:07
The Seafarer from the Anglo-Saxon by Ezra Pound. Recorded for LibriVox.org by Alan Drake.
May I from my own self-song's truth reckon, Journeys, jargon, How I in harsh days hardship endured oft. Bitter breastcares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, and dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent narrow night-watch nigh the ship's head, while she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted, my feet were by frost benumbed. Chill its chains are. Chafting sighs hew my heart round, and hunger begot mere weary mood. Lest man know not that he on dry land loveliest liveth. List how I, care wretched, on ice-cold sea, weathered the winter, watched outcasts deprived of my kinship, hung with hard ice-flakes, where hailscut flew. There I heard naught save the harsh sea and the ice-cold wave.
At whiles the swan cries. Did for my games the gannets clamor, Seafowl's loudness was for me laughter, The mews singing all my mead-drink. Storms, on the stone cliffs beaten, Fell on the stern in icy feathers, Full off the eagle screamed with a spray on his pinion. Not any protector may make merry man faring needy. This he little believes. Who aye in winsome life abides mid Burgers some heavy business. Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I, weary, oft must abide above brine. Nearest nightshade snoweth from north, frost froze the land. Hail fell on earth then, corn of the coldest. Nastless there knocketh now. The heart's thought that I, on high stream, the salt-wavy tumult transverse alone. Moaneth always my mind's lust that I fare forth, that I afar hence seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man above earth's mist, not though he be given his good. But will have in his youth greed, nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful, but shall have his sorrow for seafare, whatever his lord will. He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring having, nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight, nor any wit, else save the wave's slash. Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water. Basque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries, Fields to fairness, landfares briskier. All this admonisheth man eager of mood, The heart turns to travel, so that he then thinks on floodways to be far departing. Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying, He singeth summerwood, bodeth sorrow, the bitter heart's blood.
Burger knows not, he the prosperous man. What some perform, where wandering them wildest draweth, so that, but now, my heart bursts from my breastlock. My mood, midst the mere flood, over the whale's acre, would wander wild. My earth's shelter cometh off to me, eager and ready, the crying lone flier, wets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly, o'er trails of ocean, seeing that anyhow my lord deems to me this dead life on lone and on land. I believe not that any earth-wheel eternal standeth, save there be somewhat calamitous. That ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain. Dis-ease, or oldness, or sword-hate beats out the breath from doom-gript body. And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after, laud the living, boasteth some last word, that he will work ere he pass'd onward.
Frame on the fair earth gainst foes his malice, daring adieu, so that all men shall honor him after, and his laud beyond them remain mid the English. Ay, for ever, a lasting life's blast, delight mid the doughty, days little durable, and all arrogance of earthen riches, There come now no kings, nor caesars, nor gold-giving lords like those gone. However in mirth most magnified, whoever lived in life most lordliest, drear all excellence, delights undurable, warneth the watch, but the world holdeth. Tombs hideth trouble, the blade is laid low. Earthly glory ageth and seareth, no man at all going the earth's gate. But age fares against him, his face paleth, gray-haired he groaneth, nose-gone companions, lordly men are to earth's over-given.
Nor may he then the flesh cover whose life ceaseth Nor eat the sweet, nor feel the sorry, nor stir hand, nor think in mid-heart. And though he strew the grave with gold, his born brothers, their buried bodies, be an unlikely treasure hoard.
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17 The Alchemist 4:41
The Alchemist. Chant for the Transmutation of Metals by Ezra Pound.
Sail of Cloustra, Aelus, Azaleus, as you move among the bright trees, as your voices under the larches of paradise make a clear sound. Sail of Klaustra, Aelis, Azales, Raimona, Tibor, Berangari, Neath the dark gleam of the sky, Under night the peacock-throated. Bring the saffron-colored shell, Bring the red gold of the maple, Bring the light of the birch-tree in autumn, Muriel's, Sembelin's, Aldearda. Remember this fire. Elaine, Therese, Alchmena, Mid the silver rustling of wheat, Agraeva, Angis, Ardenka. From the plum-colored lake in stillness, From the molten dyes of the water, Bring the burnished nature of fire, Brises, Leonor, Loica, from the wide earth and the olive, from the poplars weeping their amber, by the bright flame in the fishing torch.
Remember this fire. Midones, with the gold of the sun, the leaf of the poplar by the light of the amber. Midonne's daughter of the sun, shaft of the tree, silver of the leaf, light of the yellow of the amber. Midonne's gift of the god, gift of the light, gift of the amber of the sun, give light to the metal. Anhis of Rokokor, Dardenka, Emelis, from the power of grass. From the white alive in the seed, from the heat of the bud, from the copper of the leaf in autumn, from the bronze of the maple, from the sap in the bough, Leonor, Ioanna, Loica, by the stir of the fin, by the trout asleep in the gray-green of water, Vanna, Mandetta, Vieira, Alodeta, Picarda, Manuela, from the red The red gleam of copper, Isolde, Idaun, light rustling of leaves, Vierna, Jocelyn, daring of spirits.
By the mirror of burnished copper, O Queen of Cyprus, out of Erebus, the flat lying breath, breath that is stretched out. Beneath the world. Out of Airbus, out of the flat waste of air lying beneath the world, out of the brown, leaf-brown, colorless, bring the imperceptible cool. Elaine, Therese, Alcmena, quiet this metal. Let the manes put off their terror. Let them put off their aqueous bodies of fire. Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal. Salvagia, Guiscarda, Mandata, rain flakes of gold on the water azure and flaking silver of water. Alcyon, Phaetona, Alcmena, Parlor of Silver, Pale Lustre of Latona. By these, from the malevolence of the dew, Guard this Alembic, Elaine, Therese, Allodeta.
Quiet this metal.