Ezra Pound

Old Idea Of Choan By Rosoriu (Liu Zhaolin)

I The narrow streets cut into the wide highway at Choan, Dark oxen, white horses, drag on the seven coaches with outriders. The coaches are perfumed wood, The jewelled chair is held up at the crossway, Before the royal lodge A glitter of golden saddles, awaiting the princess; They eddy before the gate of the barons. The canopy embroidered with dragons drinks in and casts back the sun. Evening comes. The trappings are bordered with mist. The hundred cords of mist are spread through and double the trees, Night birds, and night women, spread out their sounds through the gardens. II Birds with flowery wing, hovering butterflies crowd over the thousand gates, Trees that glitter like jade, terraces tinged with silver, The seed of a myriad hues, A net-work of arbours and passages and covered ways, Double towers, winged roofs, border the net-work of ways: A place of felicitous meeting. Riu's house stands out on the sky, with glitter of colour As Butei of Kan had made the high golden lotus to gather his dews, Before it another house which I do not know: How shall we know all the friends whom we meet on strange roadways? 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.