Canto LXXXI

Zeus lies in Ceres’ bosom

Taishan is attended of loves

under Cythera, before sunrise

and he said: “Hay aquí mucho

5

catolicismo—(sounded catolithismo)

y muy poco reliHión’

and he said: “Yo creo que los reyes desaparecen’

(Kings will, I think, disappear)

That was Padre José Elizondo

10

in 1906 and in 1917

or about 1917

and Dolores said “Come pan, niño,” “eat bread, me lad’

Sargent had painted her

before he descended

15

(i.e., if he descended)

but in those days he did thumb sketches,

impressions of the Velásquez in the Museo del Prado

and books cost a peseta,

brass candlesticks in proportion,

20

hot wind came from the marshes

and death-chill from the mountains.

And later Bowers wrote: “but such hatred,

I had never conceived such’

and the London reds wouldn't show up his friends

25

(i.e., friends of Franco

working in London) and in Alcázar

forty years gone, they said: “Go back to the station to eat,

you can sleep here for a peseta’

goat bells tinkled all night

30

and the hostess grinned: “Eso es luto, haw!

mi marido es muerto’

(it is mourning, my husband is dead)

when she gave me paper of the locanda to write on

with a black border half an inch or more deep, say 5/8ths, of the locanda

35

“We call all foreigners frenchies’

and the egg broke in Cabranez’ pocket,

thus making history. Basil says

they beat drums for three days

till all the drumheads were busted

40

(simple village fiesta)

and as for his life in the Canaries. . .

Possum observed that the local portagoose folk dance

was danced by the same dancers in divers localities

in political welcome . . .

45

the technique of demonstration

Cole studied that (not G.D.H., Horace)

“You will find” said old André Spire,

“that every man on that board (Crédit Agricole)

has a brother-in-law.’

50

“You the one, I the few’

said John Adams

speaking of fears in the abstract

to his volatile friend Mr. Jefferson,

(to break the pentameter, that was the first heave)

55

or as Jo Bard says: “They never speak to each other,

if it is baker and concierge visibly

it is La Rochefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly.’

“Te caveró le budella’

“La corata a te’

60

In less than a geological epoch

said Henry Mencken

“Some cook, some do not cook,

some things cannot be altered’

'Ιυγξ . . .’ εμὸν ποτί δῶμα τὸ ὰνδρα

65

What counts is the cultural level,

thank Benin for this table ex packing box

“doan yu tell no one I made it’

from a mask as fine as any in Frankfurt

“It'll get you offn th’ groun’

70

Light as the branch of Kuanon

And at first disappointed with shoddy

the bare ramshackle quais, but then saw the

high buggy wheels

and was reconciled,

75

George Santayana arriving in the port of Boston

and kept to the end of his life that faint thethear

of the Spaniard

as a grace quasi imperceptible,

as did Muss the v for u of Romagna,

80

and said the grief was a full act

repeated for each new condoloress

working up to a climax.

And George Horace said he wd/ “get Beveridge” (Senator)

Beveridge wouldn't talk and he wouldn't write for the papers

85

but George got him by campin’ in his hotel

and assailin’ him at lunch breakfast an’ dinner

three articles

and my ole man went on hoein’ corn

while George was a-tellin’ him,

90

come across a vacant lot

where you'd occasionally see a wild rabbit

or mebbe only a loose one

AOI!

a leaf in the current

95

at my grates no Althea

libretto

Yet

Ere the season died a-cold

Borne upon a zephyr's shoulder

100

I rose through the aureate sky

Lawes and Jenkins guard thy rest

Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,

Has he tempered the viol's wood

To enforce both the grave and the acute?

105

Has he curved us the bowl of the lute?

Lawes and Jenkins guard thy rest

Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,

Hast ‘ou fashioned so airy a mood

To draw up leaf from the root?

110

Hast ‘ou found a cloud so light

As seemed neither mist nor shade?

Then resolve me, tell me aright

If Waller sang or Dowland played.

Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly

115

I may the beauté of hem nat susteyene

And for 180 years almost nothing.

Ed ascoltando il leggier mormorio

there came new subtlety of eyes into my tent,

whether of spirit or hypostasis,

120

but what the blindfold hides

or at carneval

nor any pair showed anger

Saw but the eyes and stance between the eyes,

colour, diastasis,

125

careless or unaware it had not the

whole tent's room

nor was place for the full Ειδὼϛ

interpass, penetrate

casting but shade beyond the other lights

130

sky's clear

night's sea

green of the mountain pool

shone from the unmasked eyes in half-mask's space.

What thou lovest well remains,

135

the rest is dross

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage

Whose world, or mine or theirs

or is it of none?

140

First came the seen, then thus the palpable

Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

145

Pull down thy vanity, it is not man

Made courage, or made order, or made grace,

Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.

Learn of the green world what can be thy place

In scaled invention or true artistry,

150

Pull down thy vanity,

Paquin pull down!

The green casque has outdone your elegance.

“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare’

Pull down thy vanity

155

Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,

A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,

Half black half white

Nor knowst'ou wing from tail

Pull down thy vanity

160

How mean thy hates

Fostered in falsity,

Pull down thy vanity,

Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,

Pull down thy vanity,

165

I say pull down.

But to have done instead of not doing

This is not vanity

To have, with decency, knocked

That a Blunt should open

170

To have gathered from the air a live tradition

or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame

this is not vanity.

Here error is all in the not done,

all in the diffidence that faltered . . .

—
Ezra Pound

The Pisan Cantos, 1948