Ezra Pound

 

Ezra Pound photographed byAlvin Langdon Coburn, 19

The Jewel Stairs' Grievance by Li Po

 

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew.

It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.



Note by Pound: Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of the weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct approach

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.