Better From Ezra

      Here, one of the better poems of Ezra Pound, at least in my worthless estimation:

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches
As with winter's wound with her sleight hand as she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

Good, isn't it? So much better, I think, than the everso-desperately polymathic cantos that eventually plagued him to his death. It's also one of his very few sonnets. I love the use of the verb "staunches" in the twelfth line, as I do the entire eighth line, "To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her," surely a marvel of syntactical origami. And, alas, Pound's toughness with a romantic impulse is perfect: strange to think of days when one-- okay, I, though surely I am not the only one-- clung to a notion of an ideal instead of sidling up with the present.

      Strictly for quirk's sake, here's Pound's revision of the (anonymous) Middle English lyric "Sumer is Icumen In" (included at right for comparison):

Ancient Music Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, and how the wind doth ramm,          Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver,          Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,          So 'gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm, Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Sumer Is Icumen In Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med And springth the wude nu. Sing, cuccu! Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu Bulloc sterteth, bucke ferteth. Murie sing, cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singes thu, cuccu. Ne swik thu naver nu! Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu! Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!

Strange, isn't it? After all, most of us read Pound and end up sighing Goddamm.

      In discussion of Hopkins, RK mentioned Pound's The Seafarer. Here it is for those of you that have never read it before. The phrase "journey's jargon" is one for the ages, as is "a lasting-life's blast." Add them to your vocabularies, especially those of you in courses: use the first phrase in one of your classes in riposte to some academic pretension, and I will acknowledge you forever as "Grasshopper." Don't worry, you won't have to call me "Sensei." Unless, of course, you really insist upon it. ;-)