Ezra Pound

To-Em-Mei's ‘The Unmoving Cloud' by Tao-Chien (365-427 AD)

I The clouds have gathered, and gathered, and the rain falls and falls, The eight ply of the heavens are all folded into one darkness, And the wide, flat road stretches out. I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet, I pat my new cask of wine. My friends are estranged, or far distant, I bow my head and stand still. II Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered, The eight ply of the heavens are darkness, The flat land is turned into river. 'Wine, wine, here is wine!' I drink by my eastern window. I think of talking and man, And no boat, no carriage, approaches. III The trees in my east-looking garden are bursting out with new twigs, They try to stir new affection, And men say the sun and moon keep on moving because they can't find a soft seat. The birds flutter to rest in my tree, and I think I have heard them saying, 'It is not that there are no other men But we like this fellow the best, But however we long to speak He can not know of our sorrow. ' 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.