THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER
by: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
- HILE my hair was still cut straight
across my forehead
- I played 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 far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
- And you have been gone five months.
- The monkeys make sorrowful noise 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 this 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 you,
- As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
"The River-Merchant's Wife"
is reprinted from Lustra. London: Elkin Mathews, 1916. |
MORE
POEMS BY EZRA POUND |
|