I Eat Poetry

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter


While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
Played I about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you,
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into fat Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noises overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early in autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet tou
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.


(by Rihaku - translated by Pound)


Pound, Ezra. 1916. Lustra.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an American-born poet and critic,
who greatly shaped 20th-century English writing. He
graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., in 1905,
earning a M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania the
following year. After a one- year stint teaching in
Indiana, Pound traveled to Europe, publishing his first book
of poetry in 1908.

Having published several books of poetry, including
Personae, Pound became European correspondent for Poetry
magazine. He became involved with the Imagist movement,
which focused on concrete language and figures of speech
(avoiding romantic themes), editing the first Imagist
anthology, Des Imagistes, in 1914.

Pound lived in Paris for four years before moving to Italy,
where he would live for the next 20 years. At around the
same time, he began publishing the first volumes of The
Cantos, a series of poems that he would continue to write
for the rest of his life.

In the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, Pound became
interested in monetary reform, aligning himself with the
politics of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Pound made
several anti-American statements during radio broadcasts
aired over Rome between 1941 and 1943, which culminated in
his arrest by U.S. forces in 1945.

A panel of physicians declared Pound "insane and mentally
unfit" for trial on grounds of treason upon his return to
the United States. While the decision spared Pound's life,
he would spend 12 years at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital before
being released. Once he was released, Pound returned to
Italy where he remained until his death.