| The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter | |
| by Ezra Pound (from Cathay, 1915) | |
|
While 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-en, 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. “Translated” from the Chinese of Li Po (Based on the first of his “Two Letters from Chang-Kan”) 
|
|
|
Back to the index > Poems by Ezra Pound |
|
See More About:
Explore Poetry
Must Reads
- Poems for Spring
- On Pantoums - Interlocking Lines
- On Sestinas - A 6-Word Knitting Pattern
- American Bard Walt Whitman
- Index of Poems in our Library
Most Popular
See More About:
By Category
©2012 About.com. All rights reserved.
A part of The New York Times Company.