Canto LXXVIII

BY THE square elm of Ida

40 geese are assembled

(little sister who could dance on a sax-pence)

to arrange a pax mundi

Sobr’ un zecchin'!

Cassandra, your eyes are like tigers,

with no word written in them

You also have I carried to nowhere

to an ill house and there is

no end to the journey.

The chess board too lucid

the squares are too even...theatre of war...

“theatre” is good. There are those who did not want

it to come to an end

and those negroes, by the clothes-line are extraordinarily like the

figures del Cossa

Their green does not swear at the landscape

2 months’ life in 4 colours

ter flebiliter: Ityn

to close the temple of Janus bifronte

the two-faced bastard

“and the economic war has begun’

Napoleon wath a goodth man, it took uth

20 yearth to crwuth him

it will not take uth 20 years to crwuth Mussolini’

as was remarked in via Balbo by the Imperial Chemicals

its brother.

Firms failed as far off as Avignon...

...my red leather note-book

pax Medicea

by his own talk in Naples, Lorenzo

who left lyrics inoltre

that men sing to this day

“alla terra abbandonata’

followed him Metastasio;

“alla” non “della” in il Programma di Verona

the old hand as stylist still holding its cunning

and the water flowing away from that side of the lake

is silent as never at Sirmio

under the arches

Foresteria, Salò, Gardone

to dream the Republic. San Sepolchro

the four bishops in metal

lapped by the flame, amid ruin, la fede--

reliquaries seen on the altar.

“Someone to take the blame if we slip up on it’

Goedel's sleek head in the midst of it,

the man out of Naxos past Fara Sabina

“if you will stay for the night’

“it is true there is only one room for the lot of us’

“money is nothing’

“no, there is nothing to pay for that bread’

“nor for the minestra’

“Nothing left here but women’

“Have lugged it this far, will keep it” (il zaino)

No, they will do nothing to you.

“Who says he is an American’

a still form on the brands, Bologna

“Gruss Gott,” “Der Herr!” “Tatile ist gekommen!’

Slow lift of long banners

Roma profugens Sabinorum in terras

and belt the citye quahr of nobil fame

the lateyn peopil taken has their name

bringing his gods into Latium

saving the bricabrac

“Ere he his soddis brocht in Latio’

“each one in the name’

in whom are the voices, keeping hand on the reins

Gaudier's word not blacked out

nor old Hulme's, nor Wyndham's,

Mana aboda.

The touch of sadism in the back of his neck

tinting justice, “Steele that is one awful name.’

sd/ the cheerful reflective nigger

Blood and Slaughter to help him

dialog repartee at the drain hole

Straight as the bar of a ducking stool “got his pride’

get to the states you can buy it

Don't try that here

the bearded owl making catcalls

Pallas Δίκη sustain me

“definition can not be shut down under a box lid’

but if the gelatine be effaced whereon is the record?

“wherein is no responsible person

having a front name, a hind name and an address’

“not a right but a duty’

those words still stand uncancehed,

“Presente!’

and merrda for the monopolists

the bastardly lot of ‘em

Put down the slave trade, made the desert to yield

and menaced the loan swine

Sitalkas, double Sitalkas

“not the priest but the victim’

said Allen Upward

knew something was phoney, when he (Pellegrini)

sd/ : the money is there.

Knowledge lost with Justinian, and with Titus and Antoninus

(’law rules the sea” meaning lex Rhodi)

100

that the state have vantage from private misfortune

Not Or the story of property

to Rostovseff (is it Rostovseff?)

nothing worse than fixed charge

several years’ average

105

Mencius III, 1. T'ang Wan Kung

Chapter 3 and verse 7

Be welcome, O cricket my grillo, but you must not

sing after taps.

Guard's cap quattrocento

110

o-hon dit que'ke fois au vi'age

qu'une casque ne sert pour rien

'hien de tout

Cela ne sert que pour donner courage

a ceux qui n'en ont pas de tout

115

So Salzburg reopens

Qui suona Wolfgang grillo

P^o viola da gamba

one might do worse than open a pub on Lake Garda

so one thinks of

120

Tailhade and “Willy” (Gauthier-Villars)

and of Mockel and La Wallonie...en casque

de crystal rose les baladines

with the cakeshops in the Nevsky

and Sirdar, Armenonville or the Kashmiri house-boats,

125

en casque de crystal rose les baladines

messed up Monsieur Mozart's house

but left the door of the new concert hall

So he said, looking at the signed columns in San Zeno

“how the hell can we get any architecture

130

when we order our columns by the gross?’

red marble with a stone loop cast round it, four shafts,

and Farinata, kneeling in the cortile,

built like Ubaldo, that's race,

Can Grande's grin like Tommy Cochran's

135

“E fa di clarità l'aer tremare’

thus writ, and conserved (or was) in Verona

So we sat there by the arena,

outside, Thiy and il decaduto

the lace cuff fallen over his knuckles

140

considering Rochefoucauld

but the program (Cafe Dante) a literary program 1920 or

thereabouts was neither published nor followed

Griffiths said, years before that,: “Can't move ‘em with

a cold thing like economics I am pledged not to

145

come here ( London) to Parliament’

Aram vult nemus

as under the rain altars

asking how to discover delusions (confusions)

“Chose Kao-yao and the crooks disappeared.’

150

“Chose I Yin and the crooks toddled off.’

2 hours of living, knew when they left

that there wd/ be one hell of a fight in the senate

Lodge, Knox against world entanglement

Two with him in the whole house against the constriction of

155

Bacchus

moved to repeal that god-damned amendment

Number XVIII

Mr Tinkham

Geneva the usurers’ dunghill

160

Frogs, brits, with a few dutch pimps

as top dressing to preface extortions

and the usual filthiness

for detail see Odon's neat little volume

, that is, for a few of the more obvious details,

165

the root stench being usura and METATHEMENON

and Churchill's return to Midas broadcast by his liary.

“No longer necessary,” taxes are no longer necessary

in the old way if it (money) be based on work done

inside a system and measured and gauged to human

170

requirements

inside the nation or system

and cancelled in proportion

to what is used and worn out

à la Wörgl. Sd/ one wd/ have to think about that

175

but was hang'd dead by the heels before his thought in proposito

came into action efficiently

“For a pig,” Jepson said, “for a woman.” For the infamies of

usura,

The Stealing of the Mare, casûs bellorum, ’mits’

180

sang Mr Wilson, Thomas not Woodrow, Harriet's spirited heir

(the honours twice with his boots on,

that was Wellington)

and if theft be the main motive in government

in a large way

185

there will certainly be minor purloinments

As long as the socialists use their accessories as red herring

to keep man's mind off the creation of money

many men's mannirs videt et urbes πολύμητις

ce rusé personnage, Otis, so Nausikaa

190

took down the washing or at least went to see that the

maids didn't slack

or sat by the window

at Bagni Romagna knowing that nothing could happen

and looking ironicly at the traveler

195

Cassandra your eyes are like tigers'

no light reaches through them

eating lotus, or if not exactly the lotus, the asphodel

To be gentildonna in a lost town in the mountains

on a balcony with an iron railing

200

with a servant behind her

as it might be in a play by Lope de Vega

and one goes by, not alone,

No hay amor sin celos

Sin segreto no hay amor

205

eyes of Doña Juana la loca,

Cunizza's shade al triedro and that presage

in the air

which means that nothing will happen that will

be visible to the sargeants

210

Tre donne intorno alla mia mente

but as of conversation to follow,

boredom of that roman on Olivia's stairs

in her vision

that stone angle all of his scenery

215

with the balustrade, an antipodes

and as for the solidity of the white oxen in all this

perhaps only Dr Williams (Bill Carlos)

will understand its importance,

its benediction. He wd/ have put in the cart.

220

The shadow of the tent's peak treads on its corner peg

marking the hour. The moon split, no cloud nearer than Lucca.

In the spring and autumn

In “The Spring and Autumn’

there

225

are

righteous

wars

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—
Ezra Pound

The Pisan Cantos, 1948