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Lament of the frontier guard
By the North Gate, the wind blows fill of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autunm.
I climb the towers and towers
to watch out the barbarous land:
Desolate castle, the Sky, the wide desert.
There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts,
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring. turned to blood-ravenous autumn.
A turmoil wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom.
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
No longer the men for offence and defence.
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Riboku' s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.
Li Po
[Versió anglesa traduïda per Ezra Pound a partir d'unes traduccions de l'obra
de Li Po fetes per Enest Fenollosa amb l'ajut dels erudits japonesos Mori i
Ariga]
Δ
Lament
del guardia fronterer
A la Porta Nord hi bufa
un vent sorrenc,
solitari des de l'inici del temps fins ara!
Cauen els arbres, l'herbei s'esgrogueeix amb la tardor.
Jo m'enfilo de torre en torre
per tal de vigilar la terra dels
bàrbars:
castell desolat, el cel, l'ample desert.
No queda un mur dempeus en aquest poble.
Ossos esblanqueïts per mil
gebrades,
túmuls alts, coberts d'arbres i d'herba;
qui acabà amb tot aixo?
Qui provoca la flamígera fúria
imperial?
Qui ha dut l'exèrcit amb
timbals i tambors?
Reis bàrbars.
Una gentil primavera esdevinguda tardor
cobejosa de sang,
un batibull de guerrers esparsos pel regne del mig,
tres-cents seixanta-mil,
i sofriment, sofrirnent com
una pluja.
Sofriment en anar-hi, i sofriment,
sofriment en tornar.
Desolats, camps desolats,
i sobre ells no deixa fills la
guerra,
ni hornes per a l'atac i la defensa.
Ah, com podreu saber l'afrós
sofriment a la
Porta Nord,
amb el nom de Rihaku oblidat,
i nosaltres, els guardes, pastura dels
tigres.
[Traducció de Francesc
Parcerisas en Catai Ezra Pound, Empúries, Barcelona 1985]
Δ
Lamento del guardia de la
frontera
En la Puerta del Norte henchido de arena sopla el viento
¡solitario desde el inicio de los tiempos!
Caen los árboles, amarillea la hierba al impacto del otoño.
Escalo torres y torreones
para observar la tierra de los bárbaros:
castillo desolado, el cielo, el desierto sin fin.
No se sostiene un muro en pie sobre la aldea.
Huesos blanquísimos inmersos en la escarcha,
grandes cúmulos cubiertos de árboles y hierba.
¿Quién provocó estos despojos?
¿Quién encendió la flamígera cólera imperial?
¿Quién trajo este ejército con tambores y atabales?
Reyes bárbaros.
Deliciosa primavera convertida en otoño ávido de sangre,
baraúnda de guerreros esparcidos por el Reino Central,
trescientos sesenta mil, .
y dolores y dolores como cae la lluvia.
Dolores a la ida, y dolor, dolor a la vuelta.
Desolados campos desolados,
sin huérfanos de la contienda que los crucen,
no más hombres de ataque y de defensa.
¡Ah!, cómo pudieras conocer la lúgubre aflicción de la Puerta del Norte,
con el nombre de Rihoku olvidado,
y nosotros los guardias pasto de los tigres.
Li Po
[Versió castellana traduïda per Ricardo Silva Santisteban de l'original
anglès que Ezra Pound va escriure a partir d'unes traduccions de l'obra de Li
Po fetes per Enest Fenollosa amb l'ajut dels erudits japonesos Mori i Ariga.
Dins de Cathay de Ezra Pound, Tusquets, Barcelona 1972]
Δ
Canto XXI
"Keep the peace, Borso"
Where are we?
Keep on with the business
That's
made me,
And the res
publica didn't
When I was broke and a poor kid,
They all knew me, All
of these cittadini
And they all of them
cut me dead della Gloria"
Intestate, 1429,
leaving 178,221 florins di sugello,
As is said in
Cossino's red leather note book di sugello
And "with his credit
emptied Venice of money" ―
That was Cosimo
―
"And Napels, and
made them accept his peace."
And he caught the
young boy Ficino
And had him taught the
Greek language;
"With two ells of red
cloth per person
I will make you",
Cossimo speaking, "as many
Honest citizens as you
desire."
Col credito suo...
Napoli e Venezia di
danari...
Costretti... Napoli e
Venizia... a quella pace...
Or another time... oh
well,cpass it.
And Piero called in
the credits,
(Diotisalvi was back
of that)
And firms failed as
far off as Avignon,
And Piero was like to
be murdered,
And young Lauro came
down ahead of him, in tge road,
And said: Yes, father
is coming.
Intestate, '69, in
December leaving me 237,989 florins,
As you will find in my
big green account book
In carta di capretto;
And from '34 when I
count it, to last year,
We paid out 600,1000
and over,
That was for building,
taxes and charity.
Nic
Urzano saw no coming. Against it,
honest,
And
warned 'em. They'd have murdered him,
And
would Cosimo, but he bribed
'em;
And they did in
Guiliano. E difficile,
A
Firenze difficile viver ricco
Senza aver costato.
"E non avendo stato
Piccinino
Doveva temerlo qualunque era in stato";
And "that men sweated blood to put through
that railway";
"Could you",
wrote Mr. Jefferson,
Find me a gardener
Who can play the french horn?
The bounds of
American fortune
Will not admid the indulgence of a
domestic band of
Musicians,
yet I have thought that a passion for music
Might be reconciled with that economy
which we are
Obliged to observe.
I retain among my domestic servants
A gardener,
a weaver, a cabinet-maker,
and a stone-cutter,
To which
I would add a vigneron. In a country like yours
(id est Burgundy)
where music is cultivated and
Practised by evry class of men,
I suppose there might
Be found persons of these trades who
could perform on
The french horn,
clarionet, or hautboy and bassoon
so
That one might have a band of two
french horns, two
Clarionets, two hauboys and a bassoon
without enlarging
Their domestic expenses. A certainty of employment for
Half a dozen years
(affatigandose per suo piacer o non)
And at the end of that time, to find them,
if they
Choose, a conveyance to their own country,
might induce
Then to come here on reasonable wages.
Without meaning to
Give you trouble, perhaps it might be practicable for you
In your ordinary intercourse with your people to find out
Such men disposed to come to America.
Sobriety and good
Nature would be desirable parts of their characters"
June 1778 Montecello
And in July I went up toMilan for
Duke Galaez
To sponsor his infant in baptism,
Albeit were others more worthy,
And took his wife a gold collar holding
a diamond
That cost about 3,000 ducats on which account
That signor Galaez Sforza
Visconti has wished me
To stand sponsor to all of his children.
Another war without glory and another peace without
quiet
And the Sultan sent him an assassin his
brother
And the Soldan of
Egypt, a lion;
And
he begat one pope and one son and
four daughters
And an University, Pisa;
(Lauro Medici)
And nearly went broke in his business,
And bought land in Siena
and Pisa,
And made peace by his own talk in
Napels.
And there was grass on the floor of the temple
Or where the floor of it might have been;
Gold fades in the gloom
Under the blue-black roof, Placidia's
Of the exarchate; and we sit here
By the arena,
les gradins...
And the palazzo, baseless,
hangs there in the dawn
With low mist over the tide mark;
And floats there nel tramonto
With gold mist over the tide-mark.
The tesserae of the floor, and the patterns.
Fools making new shambles
night over green ocean
And the dry black of the night.
Night of the golden tiger,
And the dry flame in the air,
Voices of the procession
Faint now, from below us,
An
the sea with tin flash in the sun-dazzle,
Like dark wine in the shadows.
"Wind between the
sea and the mountains"
The tree-Spheres half dark against sea half clear
against sunset,
The sun's
keel freighted with cloud,
And after that hour, dry darkness
Floating flame in the air, gonads in organdy,
Dry flamelet, a pertal borne in the wind.
Gignetei kalon
Impenetrable as the ignorance of old women
In the dawn as the fleet coming in after
Actium,
Shore to the eastward
and altered,
And the old man sweeping leaves:
"Damned to you
Midas, Midas lacking a Pan!"
And now in the valley,
Valley under the day's edge:
"Grow with the
Pines of Ise;
As the Nile swells with Inopos.
As the
Nile falls with Inopos."
Phoibos, Turris eburnea,
ivorvy against cobalt,
And the boughs cut on the air,
The leaves cut on the air,
The hounds on the green slope by the hill,
water still black in the shadow.
In the crisp air,
the discontinuous gods;
Pallas, young owl in the cup of her hand,
And, by night, the stag runs,
and the leopard,
Owl-eye amid pine boughs.
Moon on the palm-leaf,
confusion
Confusion ource of renewals;
Yellow wing,
pale in the moon shaft,
Green wing, pale in the moon shaft,
Pomegranate, pale in the moon shaft,
White horn, pale in the moon shaft,
and Titania
By the drinking hole
steps,
cut in the basalt,
Dance there Athame, danced,
and there Phaethusa
With colour in the vein,
Strong as with blood-drink, once,
With colour in the vein,
Read in the smoke-faint throat.
Dis caught her up.
And the old man went on there
beating his mule with an asphodel
Δ
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