In Tempore Senectutis poem – Ezra Pound poems
When I am old I will not have you look apart From me, into the cold, Friend of my heart, Nor be sad in your remembrance Of the careless, mad-heart semblance That the wind hath blown away When I am old. When I am old And the white hot wonder-fire Unto the world seem […]
In A Station Of The Metro poem – Ezra Pound poems
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. *** Ezra Pound Poems by Ezra Pound Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) is one of the most influential but also […]
Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I) poem – Ezra Pound poems
“Vocat aestus in umbram” Nemesianus Es. IV. E. P. Ode pour l’élection de son sépulchre For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start — No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born […]
Historion poem – Ezra Pound poems
No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord […]
Grace Before Song poem – Ezra Pound poems
Lord God of heaven that with mercy dight Th’alternate prayer wheel of the night and light Eternal hath to thee, and in whose sight Our days as rain drops in the sea surge fall, As bright white drops upon a leaden sea Grant so my songs to this grey folk may be: As drops […]
Further Instructions poem – Ezra Pound poems
Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions. Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future. You are very idle, my songs, I fear you will come to a bad end. You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops, […]
Francesca poem – Ezra Pound poems
You came in out of the night And there were flowers in your hand, Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you. I who have seen you amid the primal things Was angry when they spoke your name IN ordinary places. I would that […]
Fan-Piece, For Her Imperial Lord poem – Ezra Pound poems
O fan of white silk, clear as frost on the grass-blade, You also are laid aside. *** Ezra Pound Poems by Ezra Pound Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) is one of the most influential […]
Ezra on the Strike poem – Ezra Pound poems
Wal, Thanksgivin’ do be comin’ round. With the price of turkeys on the bound, And coal, by gum! Thet were just found, Is surely gettin’ cheaper. The winds will soon begin to howl, And winter, in its yearly growl, Across the medders begin to prowl, And Jack Frost gettin’ deeper. By shucks! It seems […]
Epilogue poem – Ezra Pound poems
O chansons foregoing You were a seven days’ wonder. When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago, And now you are stale and worn out, You’re a very depleted fashion, A hoop-skirt, a calash, An homely, transient antiquity. Only emotion remains. Your emotions? Are those of a maitre-de-cafe. […]
Envoi poem – Ezra Pound poems
Go, dumb-born book, Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes: Hadst thou but song As thou hast subjects known, Then were there cause in thee that should condone Even my faults that heavy upon me lie And build her glories their longevity. Tell her that sheds Such treasure in the air, […]
E.P. Ode Pour L’election De Son Sepulchre poem – Ezra Pound poems
For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start– No, hardly, but seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; […]
Dance Figure poem – Ezra Pound poems
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee Dark-eyed, O woman of my dreams, Ivory sandalled, 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 […]
Cino poem – Ezra Pound poems
Italian Campagna 1309, the open road Bah! I have sung women in three cities, But it is all the same; And I will sing of the sun. Lips, words, and you snare them, Dreams, words, and they are as jewels, Strange spells of old deity, Ravens, nights, allurement: And they are not; Having become […]
Canto XLIX poem – Ezra Pound poems
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses: Rain; empty river; a voyage, Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight Under the cabin roof was one lantern. The reeds are heavy; bent; and the bamboos speak as if weeping. Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes against sunset Evening is like […]
Canto XIII poem – Ezra Pound poems
Kung walked by the dynastic temple and into the cedar grove, and then out by the lower river, And with him Khieu Tchi and Tian the low speaking And “we are unknown,” said Kung, “You will take up charioteering? “Then you will become known, “Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery? “Or […]
Canto I poem – Ezra Pound poems
And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us onward with bellying canvas, Crice’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. […]
Cantico del Sole poem – Ezra Pound poems
The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest […]
Before Sleep poem – Ezra Pound poems
The lateral vibrations caress me, They leap and caress me, They work pathetically in my favour, They seek my financial good. She of the spear stands present. The gods of the underworld attend me, O Annubis, These are they of thy company. With a pathetic solicitude they attend me; Undulant, Their realm is the […]
Ballad of the Goodly Fere poem – Ezra Pound poems
Simon Zelotes speaking after the Crucifixion. Fere=Mate, Companion. Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all For the priests and the gallows tree? Aye lover he was of brawny men, O’ ships and the open sea. When they came wi’ a host to take Our Man His smile was good to see, “First let […]
Ballad for Gloom poem – Ezra Pound poems
For God, our God is a gallant foe That playeth behind the veil. I have loved my God as a child at heart That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, I have loved my God as a maid to man— But lo, this thing is best: To love your God as a gallant foe that […]
And the days are not full enough poem – Ezra Pound poems
And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass *** Ezra Pound Poems by Ezra Pound Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 […]
Ancient Music poem – Ezra Pound poems
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 […]
An Immorality poem – Ezra Pound poems
Sing we for love and idleness, Naught else is worth the having. Though I have been in many a land, There is naught else in living. And I would rather have my sweet, Though rose-leaves die of grieving, Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men’s believing. […]
Alba poem – Ezra Pound poems
As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn. *** Ezra Pound Poems by Ezra Pound Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) is one of the most influential […]
A Virginal poem – Ezra Pound poems
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 æther; As with sweet leaves; as with subtle […]
A Pact poem – Ezra Pound poems
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman– I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap […]
A Girl by Ezra Pound
The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast- Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child – so high – you are, And all this is folly […]
The Kingfisher poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening. Months later, intermission in a […]
The Cooling Tower poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
By night a laddered diagram seen from the windows of this bedroom town-rayflowcrs of dread ascending and descending- identifies the cooling tower, insomniac vision revealed by day as a grayed obese archangel, its twiddled dirk of ash and rhinestone a metronomic rerun of some half obliterated last nightmare of Eden in the West: […]
Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In those days the oatfields’ fenced-in vats of running platinum, the yellower alloy of wheat and barley, whose end, however gorgeous all that trammeled rippling in the wind, came down to toaster-fodder, cereal as a commodity, were a rebuke to permanence-to bronze or any metal less utilitarian than the barbed braids that marked […]
Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In those days the oatfields’ fenced-in vats of running platinum, the yellower alloy of wheat and barley, whose end, however gorgeous all that trammeled rippling in the wind, came down to toaster-fodder, cereal as a commodity, were a rebuke to permanence-to bronze or any metal less utilitarian than the barbed braids that marked […]
Gradual Clearing poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Late in the day the fog wrung itself out like a sponge in glades of rain, sieving the half-invisible cove with speartips; then, in a lifting of wisps and scarves, of smoke-rings from about the islands, disclosing what had been wavering fishnet plissé as a smoothness of peau-de-soie or just-ironed percale, with a […]
Brought From Beyond poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
The magpie and the bowerbird, its odd predilection unheard of by Marco Polo when he came upon, high in Badakhshan, that blue stone’s embedded glint of pyrites, like the dance of light on water, or of angels (the surface tension of the Absolute) on nothing, turned, by processes already ancient, into pigment: ultramarine, […]
A Hairline Fracture poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Whatever went wrong, that week, was more than weather: a shoddy streak in the fabric of the air of London that disintegrated into pollen and came charging down by the bushelful, an abrasive the color of gold dust, eroding the tearducts and littering the sidewalks in the neighborhood of Sloane Square, where the […]
A Cure At Porlock poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
For whatever did it-the cider at the Ship Inn, where the crowd from the bar that night had overflowed singing into Southey’s Corner, or an early warning of appendicitis- the remedy the chemist in the High Street purveyed was still a dose of kaopectate in morphine-the bane and the afflatus of S.T.C. when […]
Women’s Song Of The Corn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
How beautiful are the corn rows, Stretching to the morning sun, Stretching to the evening sun. Very beautiful, the long rows of corn. How beautiful is the white corn, I husk it, I grind it. Very beautiful, my white corn. How beautiful is the red corn, I gather it and make fine meal, […]
Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
I am waving a ripe sunflower, I am scattering sunflower pollen to the four world-quarters. I am joyful because of my melons, I am joyful because of my beans, I am joyful because of my squashes. The sunflower waves. So did the corn wave When the wind blew against it, So did my […]
Women’s Song Of The Corn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
How beautiful are the corn rows, Stretching to the morning sun, Stretching to the evening sun. Very beautiful, the long rows of corn. How beautiful is the white corn, I husk it, I grind it. Very beautiful, my white corn. How beautiful is the red corn, I gather it and make fine meal, […]
Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
I am waving a ripe sunflower, I am scattering sunflower pollen to the four world-quarters. I am joyful because of my melons, I am joyful because of my beans, I am joyful because of my squashes. The sunflower waves. So did the corn wave When the wind blew against it, So did my […]