Canto the last.

This is the last of the Cantos of Ezra Pound that have been published, or extracts of I can find. I would have to copy and type from the published text, which I am in the process of acquiring.

Most of it is under copyright. Which serves me: if I looked for premodern poets, like Pope or Wordsworth, they are available.

The fact that the poet writes in cod Latin and Italian and makes allusions… well English has neither the words nor the ability to hold a certain structures. There is a reason that Clive James rewrote Dante in Quatrains: not as the Italians would. And a reason that accurate granslations into English do not work, but his does.

James and Pound are poets first, not scholars.

From Canto XXXVI

 “Called thrones, balascio or topaze”
Eriugina was not understood in his time
“which explains, perhaps, the delay in condemning him”
And they went looking for Manicheans
And found, so far as I can make out, no Manicheans
So they dug for, and damned Scotus Eriugina
“Authority comes from right reason,
                never the other way on”
Hence the delay in condemning him
Aquinas head down in a vacuum,
               Aristotle which way in a vacuum?
Sacrum, sacrum, inluminatio coitu.
Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana
                of a castle named Goito.
“Five castles!
“Five castles!”
                (king giv’ him five castles)
“And what the hell do I know about dye-works?!”
His Holiness has written a letter:
                “CHARLES the Mangy of Anjou….
..way you treat your men is a scandal….”
Dilectis miles familiaris…castra Montis Odorisii
Montis Sancti Silvestri pallete et pile…
In partibus Thetis….vineland
                                                land tilled
                                                the land incult
                                                pratis nemoribus pascuis
                                                with legal jurisdiction
his heirs of both sexes,
…sold the damn lot six weeks later,
Sordellus de Godio.
                Quan ben m’albir e mon ric pensamen.

Ezra Pound

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