“slowly lurching toward your favorite city / pierced through the heart but never killed”

For Poetry Monday, after an influencer of Pound, Pound himself—at least in part:


The Sole Survivor, Rai San’yō, tr. Ezra Pound

A force cut off
Fighting hard,
Shut around.

I burst the bonds,
I alone,
I returned,

Fleeing by night
Through the crags of the border.

My sword is broken,
My horse fallen.
The hero drags his corpse to his native mountains.

Rai (1780-1832) was an Edo-period historian and poet. In November 1915, Pound attended a London performance of sword dances by Itō Michio (1892-1961), some of which were accompanied by songs sung by Uchiyama Masami (I can’t find good dates on this guy), one of them being this. This translation (made with Uchiyama’s assistance, credited as “from notes by”) was first published in the Dec 1916 issue of Future without naming the author. The original title was “Kogun Funto,” which more literally means “exhausted warrior,” and the original form was a single four-line stanza.

—L.

Subject quote from Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift.