The Thirty-Ninth Canto represents exactly why one reads the Cantos in the first place: beautiful, poetic and allusive language and a certain obscurity that manages not to obscure the pleasures of reading it.

There are so many passages I could quote to give an example of what I am talking about, but since I don’t want to just reprint the whole piece, here’s a taste:

Desolate is the roof where the cat sat,
Desolate is the iron rail that he walked
And the corner post whence he greeted the sunrise.
In the hill path: ” thkk, thgk “
                                                   of the loom
” Thgk, thkk ” and the sharp sound of a song
                under olives
When I lay in the ingle of Circe
I heard of song of that kind. 

The “thkk” reminds of Joyce and his efforts to capture the actual sounds of animals instead just using cheap short hand like “meow.”

Also, this line, “Betuene Aprile and Merche” reminds of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, particularly Silliman’s Tjanting, which uses misspellings to draw attention to the words themselves.