a letter

THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER
Ezra Pound

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.

Rihaku

("The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is based on the first of Li Po's "Two Letters from Chang-Kan." Copyright © 1956, 1957 by Ezra Pound. this clearly international phenomenon ranged from the light-hearted to the profound. ezra pound, another imagist, translated japanese and chinese poems into english, which helped popularize the forms in the west. the image at the upper right, i found here.)