THREE CANTOS OF A POEM OF SOME LENGTH

I

1. HANG it all, there can be but the one "Sordello,"
2. But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks,
3. Let in your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing's an artform,
4.  Your "Sordello," and that the " modern world"
5. Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in ;
6. Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery
7. As fresh sardines flapping and slipping on the marginal cobbles ?
8. I stand before the booth (the speech), but the truth
9. Is inside this discourse: this booth is full of the marrow of wisdom.
10. Give up the intaglio method?
11.                                                             Tower by tower,
12. Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan
13. Follows the builder's whim; Beaucaire's slim gray
14. Leaps from the stubby base of Altaforte-
15.  Mohammed's windows, for the Alcazar
16.  Has such a garden, split by a tame small stream-
17.  The moat is ten yards wide, the inner court-yard
18. Haifa-swim with mire.
19. Trunk-hose ?
20.                         There are not.  The rough men swarm out
21. In robes that are half Roman, half like the Knave of Hearts,
22. And I discern your story:
23.                                                 Peire Cardinal
24. Was half fore-runner of Dante.     Arnaut's the trick
25. Of the unfinished address,
26. And half your dates are out; you mix your eras ;
27. For that great font, Sordello sat beside-
28. 'Tis an immortal passage, but the font
29. Is some two centuries outside the picture-
30. And no matter.
31.                         Ghosts move about me patched with histories.
32. You had your business: to set out so much thought.
33. So much emotion, and call the lot "Sordello."
34.  Worth the evasion, the setting figures up
35. And breathing life upon them.
36.  Has it a place in music? And your: "Appear Verona!"?
37.                                                             I walk the airy street,
38. See the small cobbles flare with poppy spoil.
39. 'Tis your "Great Day," the Corpus Domini,
40. And all my chosen and peninsular village
41. Has spread this scarlet blaze upon its lane,
42. Oh, before I was up, - with poppy flowers.
43. Mid-June, and up and out to the half ruined chapel,
44. Not the old place at the height of the rocks
45. But that splay barn-like church, the Renaissance
46. Had never quite got into trim again.
47. As well begin here, here began Catullus:
48. "Home to sweet rest, and to the waves deep laughter,"
49. The laugh they wake amid the border rushes.
50. This is our home, the trees are full of laughter,
51. And the storms laugh loud, breaking the riven waves
52. On square-shaled rocks, and here the sunlight
53. Glints on the shaken waters, and the rain
54. Comes forth with delicate tread, walking from Isola Garda,
    
    
55.                                     Lo Soleils plovil,
    
    
56. It is the sun rains, and a spatter of fire
57. Darts from the "Lydian" ripples, lacus undae,
58. And the place is full of spirits, not lemures,
59. Not dark and shadow-wet ghosts, but ancient living,
60. Wood-white, smooth as the inner-bark, and firm of aspect
61. And all a gleam with colour?
62.                                                         Not a-gleam,
63. But coloured like the lake and olive leaves,
64. GLAUKOPOS, clothed like the poppies, wearing golden greaves,
65. Light on the air. Are they Etruscan gods?
66. The air is solid sunlight, apricus.
67. Sun-fed we dwell there (we in England now)
68. For Sirmio serves my whim, better than Asolo,
69. Yours and unseen.             Your palace step?
70. My stone seat was the Dogana's vulgarest curb,
71. And there were not "those girls," there was one flare,
72.  One face, 'twas all 1 ever saw, but it was real . . .
73. And I can no more say what shape it was . . .
74. But she was young, too young.
75.                                                             True, it was Venice,
76. And at Florian's under the North arcade
77. I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for breakfast,
78. Drifted at night and seen the lit, gilt cross-beams
79. Glare from the Morosini.
80.                                                 And for what it's worth
81. I have my background; and you had your background,
82. Watched " the soul," Sordello's soul, flare up
83. And lap up life, and leap "to th' Empyrean";
84. Worked out the form, meditative, semi-dramatic,
85. Semi-epic story; and what's left ?
86. Pre-Daun-Chaucer, Pre-Boccaccio?      Not Arnaut,
87.  Not Uc St. Circ.
88.                                    Gods float in the azure air,
89. Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed;
90. It is a world like Puvis'?
91.                                                 Never so pale my friend,
92. 'Tis the first light - not half-light - Panisks
93. And oak-girls and the Maelids have all the wood;
94.                                     Our olive Sirmio
95. Lies in its burnished mirror, and the Mounts Balde and Riva
96. Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices.
97. "Non é fuggi."
98. "It is not gone."        Metastasio
99. Is right, we have that world about us.
100. And the clouds bowe above the lake, and there are folk upon them
101. Going their windy ways, moving by Riva,
102. By the western shore, far as Lonato,
103. And the water is full of silvery almond-white swimmers,
104.  The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple.
     
     
105.         "When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe,
106.          He brother to Prometheus, physicist."
     
     
107. We let Ficino
108. Start us our progress, say it was Moses' birth year?
109. Exult with Shang in squatness?           The sea-monster
110. Bulges the squarish bronzes.
111. Daub out, with blue of scarabs, Egypt,
112. Green veins in the turquoise?
113.                                                  Or gray gradual steps
114. Lead up beneath flat sprays of heavy cedars:
115. Temple of teak-wood, and the gilt brown arches
116. Triple in tier, banners woven by wall,
117. Fine screens depicted: sea-waves curled high,
118. Small boats with gods upon them,
119. Bright flame above the river: Kuanon,
120. Footing a boat that's but one lotus petal,
121. With some proud four-square genius
122. Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness,
123. Saying, 'Tis she, his friend, the mighty Goddess.
124. Sing hymns, ye reeds, and all ye roots, and herons, and swans, be glad.
125. Ye gardens of the nymphs, put forth your flowers."
126. What have I of this life?
127.                                         Or even of Guido?
128. A pleasant lie that I knew Or San Michaele,
129. Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta's,
130. Do not even  know which sword he'd with him in the street-charge.
131. I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it,
132. The box of scented wood
133. Recalls cathedrals.            Shall I claim;
134. Confuse my own phantastikon
135.  Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me
136. Contains the actual sun;
137.                                                 confuse the thing I see
138.  With actual gods behind me?
139.                                                             Are they gods behind me ?
140. Worlds we have, how many worlds we have.
141.                                                                                     If Botticelli
142. Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell,
143. His Venus (Simonetta?), and Spring
144. And Aufidus fill all the air
145. With their clear-outlined blossoms?
146.  World enough.       Behold I say, she comes
147. "Apparelled like the Spring, Graces her subjects"
148.                                                                              ("Pericles"),
149. Such worlds enough we have, have brave decors
150. And from these like we guess a soul for man
151. And build him full of aery populations,
152.                                                             (Panting and Faustus),
153. Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us:
154. Barred lights, great flares, and write to paint, not music,
155. O Casella.
156.  

REFERENCES

Pound, Ezra. Three Cantos of a Poem of Some Length I. Lustra. New York: Knopf, 1917.

Pound, Ezra. Three Cantos I. Quia Pauper Amavi. London: Egoist Press, 1919. 19-23.  Quia Pauper Amavi.

Pound, Ezra. Poems and Translations. Ed. Richard Sieburth. New York: The Library of America, 2003. 318-322.