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Friday 20 August 2010

Ezra Pound: As toward a bridge over worlds


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File:2008 Mezenc 2.jpg

Vue sur le massif du Mezenc depuis les monts du Devès (Haute-Loire): photo by Technob105, 2008





La faillite de Francois Bernouard, Paris
or a field of larks at Allègre,
........."es laissa cader"
so high toward the sun and then falling,
........."de joi sas alas"
to set here the roads of France.




File:Alauda arvensis qtl1.jpg

Flying Skylark (Alauda arvensis), Frankfurt, Germany: photo by Quartl, 2010




Two mice and a moth my guides --
to have heard the farfalla gasping
......
as toward a bridge over worlds.




File:Mouse eating leaf.JPG

Small mouse eating at an oak leaf, near Lisse, The Netherlands: photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, 2006

File:Emperor Gum Moth.jpg

Emperor Gum Moth (Opodiphthera eucalypti): photo by Fir0002, 2004



That the kings meet in their island,
........
where no food is after flight from the pole.




File:Monarch butterflies.jpg

Monarch butterflies, Iowa: photo by FatherofJGKlein, c. 2001




Milkweed the sustenance
..........to enter arcanum.





File:Swamp milkweed monarch.jpg

Monarch butterfly feeding on flowers of Swamp Milkweed (Asclepia incarnata), Illinois: photo by Teune, 2007




To be men not destroyers.




File:File-Monarch (butterfly).jpg

Monarch butterfly, Libya: photo by Victor Komiyenko, 2010


La faillite...: Ezra Pound, fragment of Canto CXIX, c. 1969, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound


a field of larks at Allègre: see:

I am walking from Le Puy to Clermont for the sake of the open country... I found myself... at 2:15 in Allègre... it is pleasant to walk thru crumpled pine woods & in one place flat to the sky line. A square field of bachelor's buttons...

Allègre
the joyous


Ezra Pound, July 1912 journal entry, from The Auvergne, in A Walking Tour in Southern France: Ezra Pound Among the Troubadours, ed. Richard Sieburth (1992)


"es laissa cader": see:

The first great "finder" ... Bernart of Ventadorn (1148-95)... was one of low degree ... Becoming a "fair man and skilled," and knowing how to make poetry, and being courteous and learned, he is honored by the Viscount of Ventadorn; makes songs to the Countess; makes one too many songs to the Countess...

The best known of Ventadorn's songs runs as follows:

.................................Quant ieu vey la' lauzeta mover
.................................De joi sas alas contral ray

When I see the lark a-moving
For joy his wings against the sunlight,
Who forgets himself and lets himself fall...

Ezra Pound, from Proença, in The Spirit of Romance (1910)


To have heard the farfalla gasping: see:

But in the great love, bewildered
farfalla in tempesta
under rain in the dark

from Canto XCII (1954)


That the kings meet in their island: see:

...the king-wings in migration
And in thy mind beauty, O Artemis

from Canto CVI (1959)

8 comments:

Phanero Noemikon said...

amen, tom.

TC said...

what could be more steadying than a word from the guardian at the Lion Gate, Novum Arcanum

...in shaky times like these

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Ah, thanks for these Tom -- Pound in moments like these saying it like it is, as they say. Pleasure to find amidst all this fog. . . .

8.20

light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, song sparrow calling from branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

approach news of local scene,
“sunset over the field”

“point” of which, appearance,
“sequence” of different

grey-white of fog against top of ridge,
whiteness of gull flapping to the left

TC said...

"song sparrow"

There is austerity and melancholy in the last Cantos, but here a passage of uplift, the spirits picked up on the wings of a memory of walking the roads of France, and the falling lark in the Bernart song who has let go, out of joy, his "hold" on the sky... the feeling of wavering in air then carrying over into the tossing of the king-wings over the perilous bridge across worlds -- EP fascinated by the idea of a polar migration in the world of lepidoptera...

The stuttering/wavering movement in "The Return" made me think of this passage (a similar sort of sense occurs in Olson's Hotel Steinplatz "heart attack" poem, with the snow flurries...)

Bowie Hagan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ed Baker said...

Pound: as a bridge over worlds

I think that Ezra Pound was a friend (and 'champion') of Kay Sage
... and many, many, many others

here a painting of Sage's:
"Danger, Construction Ahead", 1940.

http://www.tendreams.org/sage/Danger,%20Construction%20Ahead,%201940%201ac.jpg

here as many of The Surrealists (poets, painters, men and women)(s)
(sd"used"
'bridges' (from world-to-world) in their work(s).

doors windows birds watches rubble

left for "us" to use as materials for re:building (?)

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Thanks, Tom ... the butterfly, and his memory of it, harkens to the imagist phase and the first wave of haiku influence ... beautiful.

"Two mice and a moth my guides ..."

Don

TC said...

Thank you Don, and likewise for stopping in at taking Leave from a Friend.

Wicked cold wet bonechilled morning here, good to have a wise traveling companion.