EZRA POUND

Canto XLIX: For the Seven Lakes

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 a curtain of cloud,

a blurr above ripples; and through it

sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,

a cold tune amid reeds.

Behind hill the monk's bell

borne on the wind.

Sail passed here in April; may return in October

Boat fades in silver; slowly;

Sun blaze alone on the river

.Where wine flag catches the sunset

Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scur on the rive

And a world is covered with jade

Small boat floats like a lanthorn,

The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin

they are a people of leisure.

Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,

Clouds gather about the hole of the window

Broad water; geese line out with the autumn

Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,

A light moves on the north sky line;

where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.

In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.

A light moves on the South sky line.

State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?

This is infamy; this is Geryon.

This canal goes still to TenShi

Though the old king built it for pleasure

K E I M E N R A N K E I

K I U M A N M A N K E I

JITSU GETSU K O K W A

T A N FUKU T A N K A I

Sun up; work

sundown; to restdig

well and drink of the water

dig field;eat of the grain

Imperial power is? and to us what is it?

The fourth; the dimension of stillness.

And the power over wild beasts.