Canto LXXXII

WHEN with his hunting dog I see a cloud

“Guten Morgen, Mein Herr” yells the black boy

from the jo-cart

(Jeffers, Lovell and Harley

also Mr Walls who has lent me a razor

Persha, Nadasky and Harbell)

Swinburne my only miss

and I didn't know he'd been to see Landor

and they told me this that an’ tother

and when old Mathews went he saw the three teacups

two for Watts Dunton who liked to let his tea cool,

So old Elkin had only one glory

He did carry Algernon's suit can once

when he, Elkin, first came to London.

But given what I know now I'd have

got thru it somehow...Dirce's shade

or a blackjack.

When the french fishermen hauled him out he

recited ‘em

might have been Aeschylus

till they got into Le Portel, or wherever

in the original

“On the Alcides’ roof’

“like a dog...and a good roof’

ΕΜΟΣ ΠΟΣΙΣ...ΧΕΡΟΣ

hac dextera mortus

dead by this hand

believe Lytton first saw Blunt in the bull ring

as it might have been brother Packard

and “our brother Percy’

Basinio's manuscript with the

greek moulds in the margin

Otis, Soncino,

the “marble men” shall pass into nothingness,

Three birds on the wire

so requested Mr Clowes to sleep on the same

and as to who wd/ pay for the composition

if same were not used

(Elkin Mathews, my bantam)

After all” said Mr Birrell, “it is only the old story

of Tom Moore and Rogers’

Her Ladyship arose in the night

and moved all the furniture

(that is her Ladyship YX)

her Ladyship Z disliked dining alone and

The proud shall not lie by the proud

amid dim green lighted with candles

Mabel Beardsley's red head for a glory

Mr Masefield murmuring: Death

and Old Neptune meaning something unseizable

in a discussion of Flaubert

Miss Tomczyk, the medium

baffling the society for metaphysical research

and the idea that CONversation......

should not utterly wither

even I can remember

at 18 Woburn Buildings

Said Mr Tancred

of the Jerusalem and Sicily Tancreds, to Yeats,

“If you would read us one of your own choice

and

perfect

lyrics’

and more's the pity that Dickens died twice

with the disappearance of Tancred

and for all that old Ford's conversation was better,

consisting in res non verba,

despite William's anecdotes, in that Fordie

never dented an idea for a phrase's sake

and had more humanitas jen

(Cythera Cythera)

With Dirce in one bark convey'd

Be glad poor beaste, love follows after thee

Till the cricket hops

but does not chirrp in the drill field

8th day of September

f f

write the birds in their treble scale

Terreus! Terreus!

there are no righteous wars in “The Spring and Au-

tumn’

that is, perfectly right on one side or the other

total right on either side of the battle line

and the news is a long time moving

a long time in arriving

thru the impenetrable

crystalline, indestructable

ignorance of locality

The news was quicker in Troy's time

a match on Cnidos, a glow worm on Mitylene,

Till forty years since, Reithmuller indignant:

“Fvy! in Tdaenmarck efen dh’ benantz gnow him,’

meaning Whitman, exotic, still suspect

four miles from Camden

“O troubled reflection

“O Throat, O throbbing heart’

How drawn, O GEA TERRA,

100

what draws as thou drawest

till one sink into thee by an arm's width

embracing thee. Drawest,

truly thou drawest.

Wisdom lies next thee,

105

simply, past metaphor.

Where I lie let the thyme rise

and basilicum

let the herbs rise in April abundant

By Ferrara was buried naked, fu Nicolo

110

e di qua di la del Po,

wind: ‘εμὸν τὸν ἄνδρα

lie into earth to the breast bone, to the left shoulder

Kipling suspected it

to the height of ten inches or over

115

man, earth : two halves of the tally

but I will come out of this knowing no one

neither they me

connubium terrae ἔϕατα πόσις ἐμός

ΧΘΟΝΙΟΣ, mysteriurn

120

fluid ΧΘΟΝΟΣ o'erflowed me

lay in the fluid ΧΘΟΝΟΣ;

that lie

under the air's solidity

drunk with ‘ΙΧΩΡ of ΧΘΟΝΙΟΣ

125

fluid ΧΘΟΝΟΣ, strong as the undertow

of the wave receding

but that a man should live in that further terror, and live

the loneliness of death came upon me

(at 3 P. M., for an instant) δακρύων

130

ἐντεῦθεν

three solemn half notes

their white downy chests black-rimmed

on the middle wire

periplum

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—
Ezra Pound

The Pisan Cantos, 1948