Ezra Pound: As toward a bridge over worlds

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Vue sur le massif du Mezenc depuis les monts du Devès (Haute-Loire): photo by Technob105, 2008

La faillite de Francois Bernouard, Paris
or a field of larks at Allègre,
........."es laissa cader"
so high toward the sun and then falling,
........."de joi sas alas"
to set here the roads of France.

Flying Skylark (Alauda arvensis), Frankfurt, Germany: photo by Quartl, 2010

Two mice and a moth my guides --
to have heard the farfalla gasping
...... as toward a bridge over worlds.

Small mouse eating at an oak leaf, near Lisse, The Netherlands: photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, 2006

Emperor Gum Moth (Opodiphthera eucalypti): photo by Fir0002, 2004

That the kings meet in their island,
........ where no food is after flight from the pole.

Monarch butterflies, Iowa: photo by FatherofJGKlein, c. 2001

Milkweed the sustenance
..........to enter arcanum.

Monarch butterfly feeding on flowers of Swamp Milkweed (Asclepia incarnata), Illinois: photo by Teune, 2007

To be men not destroyers.

Monarch butterfly, Libya: photo by Victor Komiyenko, 2010

La faillite...: Ezra Pound, fragment of Canto CXIX, c. 1969, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound


a field of larks at Allègre: see:

I am walking from Le Puy to Clermont for the sake of the open country... I found myself... at 2:15 in Allègre... it is pleasant to walk thru crumpled pine woods & in one place flat to the sky line. A square field of bachelor's buttons...

Allègre
the joyous

Ezra Pound, July 1912 journal entry, from The Auvergne, in A Walking Tour in Southern France: Ezra Pound Among the Troubadours, ed. Richard Sieburth (1992)

"es laissa cader": see:

The first great "finder" ... Bernart of Ventadorn (1148-95)... was one of low degree ... Becoming a "fair man and skilled," and knowing how to make poetry, and being courteous and learned, he is honored by the Viscount of Ventadorn; makes songs to the Countess; makes one too many songs to the Countess...

The best known of Ventadorn's songs runs as follows:

.................................Quant ieu vey la' lauzeta mover
.................................De joi sas alas contral ray

When I see the lark a-moving
For joy his wings against the sunlight,
Who forgets himself and lets himself fall...

Ezra Pound, from Proença, in The Spirit of Romance (1910)


To have heard the farfalla gasping: see:

But in the great love, bewildered
farfalla in tempesta
under rain in the dark

from Canto XCII (1954)


That the kings meet in their island: see:

...the king-wings in migration
And in thy mind beauty, O Artemis

from Canto CVI (1959)