Ezra Pound

Leave-Taking Near Shoku by Li Po

They say the roads of Sanso are steep, Sheer as the mountains. The walls rise in a man's face, Clouds grow out of the hill at his horse's bridle. Sweet trees are on the paved way of the Shin, Their trunks burst through the paving, And freshets are bursting their ice in the midst of Shoku, a proud city. Men's fates are already set, There is no need of asking diviners. --Translated by Ezra Pound in CATHAY 1915 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.