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The Cantos
Ezra Pound Lyrics


No lyrics text found for this track.

The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
Most interesting comments from YouTube:

@irenel.3913

(a piece from Eliot's "the dry salvages")
"There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

    There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

    Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

    We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

    There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

    It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was."



@jonathanignatiusgardner9163

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?”
And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”

And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
“A second time? why? man of ill star,
“Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
“Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
“For soothsay.”
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus
“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
“Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away
And unto Circe.
Venerandam,
In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden
Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:



@davidmehnert9641

[. . .]
And Kung said " Wang ruled with moderation,
               In his day the State was well kept,
And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
I mean for things they didn't know,
But that time seems to be passing."
And Kung said, " Without character you will
               be unable to play on that instrument
Or to execute the music fit for the Odes.
The blossoms of the apricot
               blow from the east to the west,
And I have tried to keep them from falling."

                                  --- Ezra Pound, CANTO XIII
                                       XIII.IIX.MMXIV



@iranoussias

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.



All comments from YouTube:

@danielramsey6141

I'm a big Mythology buff, so to hear this story of Odysseus being told in this manner, as if by a disgruntled Sailor who feels lost at sea with his crew, it makes me wonder if that's what it truly feels like to be out on the open ocean. Where every day could lead one adrift, and their only salvation is to reach Hades in order to find ones way be home while avoiding Poseidon's wrath.

@irenel.3913

(a piece from Eliot's "the dry salvages")
"There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

    There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

    Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

    We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

    There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

    It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was."

@sdelany1

This also a poem about the history of the language, which is why the poetic techniques and rhetorical figures are so different and historically varied. They are very unlike the largely lyrical short poems that you find in Personae. The Cantos are all poems he wrote after he'd read Ulysses and, what's more, helped to get it published. For those who are familiar with Joyce's book, the Cantos is like a rambling Oxen of the Sun chapter; it's a poem as much influenced by Sappho's fragments (which he'd read in the original Greek) as it was by Dante's Purgatorio.

@alfonsoantonromero932

Thanks for uploading the video. Unfortunately, many Spanish-speaking readers cannot fully understand the greatness of Ezra Pound's poetry in its original, that is why we are doubly grateful for all these translated poems that bring him closer to us.

@pedroa.cantero9449

Esta voz está en mí desde aquella mañana luminosa en un jardincillo del Marais mientras leía la traducción de Cantos: «La manera de aprender la música del verso es oírla». La música del verso de Ezra Pound la sentí tal cual la recita, épica, grandiosa, penetrante. Testimonio dantesco del nuevo siglo y de lo que estaba por venir. Desde aquel entonces, joven exilado antifascista, sentí este lance propio. Poeta rebelde, al estilo de aquellos rapsodas antiguos que iban de ciudad en ciudad portando su palabra profética. Poeta descomunal que traspasa fronteras ideológicas como testigo fiel de estos tiempos que darían en llamar Era Atómica. Mas todo arranca en la travesía hacia el exilio voluntario que se impuso y con el ritmo oceánico que imprime a sus versos. « Y bajamos a la nave,/ enfilamos quilla a los cachones, nos deslizamos en el mar divino, e/ izamos mástil y vela sobre aquella nave oscura,/ ovejas llevábamos a bordo, y también nuestros cuerpos/ deshechos en llanto, y los vientos soplaban de popa/ impulsándonos con hinchadas velas,/ de Circe esta nave, la diosa bien peinada./ Nos sentamos luego en medio de la nave,/ mientras el viento hacía saltar la caña del timón,/ así con velas reventando, navegamos hasta el fin del día./ El sol a su descanso, las sombras en el océano./ Llegamos entonces al confín del mar más hondo, […] ». Con este canto de tono épico inicia Ezra Pound “The Cantos” y, tras más de 50 años, concluye al modo de un aforismo chino: «Intenté escribir el Paraíso./ No os mováis./ Dejad que hable el viento/ ¡él es el Paraíso!// Que los dioses olviden/ cuanto hice./ Y aquellos a quienes amo,/ procuren perdonar/ cuanto hice» (Ezra Pound, Cantos I y CXX).

@knuthamsun666

Escuchas a Coleman mientras lees a Pound?

@pedroa.cantero9449

Cada uno a su tiempo

@shaughnfourie304

perhaps our greatest latter day poet i have always loved ezra pound`s poetry

@karlkvalvik3073

I thought the bread I ate for breakfast this morning was dense; what a delicious morsel of literary masterwork is this; I hope one day to digest it. For now, I seem only able to appreciate Ezra Pound from afar. Robert Anton Wilson brought me here, to this graveyard of genius, a cantos of lore.

@elzasacramento5775

cantos espetaculares

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