ExPo #5.2: Perspective

The Study in Aesthetics

The very small children in patched clothing,
Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them
And cried up from their cobbles:

      Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’e b’ea!

But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know—
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and
thirty-four Catulli;
And there had been a great catch of sardines,
And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes
For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish
And getting in both of their ways;
And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo!
And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction
This identical phrase:

      Ch’e b’ea.

And at this I was mildly abashed.

Ezra Pound, "The Study in Aesthetics" (1915).
NOTE: Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’e b’ea! ≈ Look, look, how beautiful she is!

Expo #5.1: Persona

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter  

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-yen, 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.

     By Rihaku

Ezra Pound, "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (1915).
NOTE: "Translated by Ezra Pound from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, with the decipherings of Professors Mori and Araga" (Pound). That is, based on the first of "Two Letters from Chang-Kan" by the 8th-century Chinese poet Li Po (i.e. Rihaku).