Ezra Pound

'Sennin Poem By Kakuhaku' by Guo Pu 276-324 A. D.

The red and green kingfishers flash between the orchids and clover, One bird casts its gleam on another. Green vines hang through the high forest, They weave a whole roof to the mountain, The lone man sits with shut speech, He purrs and pats the clear strings. He throws his heart up through the sky, He bites through the flower pistil and brings up a fine fountain. The red-pine-tree god looks at him and wonders. He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin, He takes 'Floating Hill' by the sleeve, He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin. But you, you dam'd crowd of gnats, Can you even tell the age of a turtle? Kakuhaku is the Japanese name for the Chinese poet Guo Pu. Sennin is a loanword from Chinese: its main meaning is 'immortal person. ' This poem is from CATHAY (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915), the volume of Chinese poems translated by Ezra Pound from the manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa. The book's widely-applauded publication prompted T. S. Eliot to remark that Pound had "reinvented Chinese poetry for our time. " CATHAY is comprised of 18 translations of various early Chinese poems, eleven poems by T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku"), and the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Seafarer," which Pound included for timeline comparison of 8th-Century English poetry with 8th-Century Chinese poetry. CATHAY ranks among the most pivotal publications in the entire history of translation and of modern poetry in English.