DANCE FIGURE

by Ezra Pound

For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee

Dark eyed,

O woman of my dreams,

Ivory sandaled,

There is none like thee among the dancers

None with swift feet.

I have not found thee in the tents, 

In the broken darkness.

I have not found thee at the well-head

Among the women with pitchers.

Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;

Thy face as a river with lights.

White as an almond are thy shoulders;

As new almonds stripped from the husk.

They guard thee not with eunuchs;

Not with bars of copper.

Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.

A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,

O Nathat-Ikanaie, "Tree-at-the-river."

As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;

Thy fingers a frosted stream.

Thy maidens are white like pebbles;

Their music about thee!

There is none like thee among the dancers;

None with swift feet.

NOTE: [Chicago Mss. Dec. 3, 1912 (Hesse in C VII. n.17 32). Published in "Contemporania" Poetry, II.1 (April 1913): 1-12.]

"Ione, Dead the Long Year"

Empty are the ways,

Empty are the ways of this land

And the flowers

Bend over with heavy heads.

They bend in vain.

Empty are the ways of this land 

Where Ione

Walked once, and now does not walk

But seems like a person just gone. 

NOTE: Poem published in Poetry and Drama December 1914 (C VII: n.17 31)

REFERENCES

Ezra Pound. Dance Figure. "Ione, Dead the Long Year." In Personae. The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound. Eds. Lea Baechler and A Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1990. 91-92; 115-116. [Both poems published in Lustra, 1916.]

Carroll F. Terrell. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993. (C)