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Rock formation sculpted by wind erosion, Altiplano, Bolivia: photo by Thomas Wilken, 2005
I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
...Let the wind speak
.........that is paradise.
Let the Gods forgive what I
.........have made
Let those I love try to forgive
.........what I have made.
Lightning and lava flows over Eyjafjallajokull: photos by Olivier Vandeginste, Sunday 18 April 2010
Ezra Pound: Notes for Canto CXX, c. 1960
Also by EP:
ReplyDeleteEzra Pound: As toward a bridge over worlds
Ezra Pound: Farfalla in Tempesta
Ezra Pound: Separation on the River Kiang
Ezra Pound: Taking Leave of a Friend
Ezra Pound: The black panther lies under his rose-tree
Ezra Pound: The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Reading these "breaking through the noise", plain but bold words, makes me want to speak less but more clearly -- to make what I say count, to digress less. The Bolivian stone paired with its Icelandic prototype images is quite a feat of matching, half a world away.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely wonderful poem, thanks Tom.
ReplyDeleteIn turning the small quiet remaining "voice" of the poem over to the the elements, Pound almost seems to be passing on to nature -- always his spiritual source, though sometimes he spoke of it as gods and goddesses -- the keys to his kingdom. After this divestment came silence.
ReplyDeleteThe wind speaking through the rock of the Altiplano, the earth speaking through the great volcanic rift in Iceland, these expressions of natural energy and force seemed to echo, perhaps, some of the poet's lost and unspoken "words".
As to the apparent admission of error, I think all that's revealed is that Pound was all along as conscious as almost everyone else of how close his whole great poem always came to disintegrating into chaos. But there are kinds of order within kinds of apparent disorder, maybe. This would be the theme of Robert Duncan, in exchanging thoughts with EP's onetime classmate and sweetheart H.D.:
Ezra Pound's Hodge-Podge (Robert Duncan to H.D.)