This Canto bounces around a bit, linguistically. Splashes of Latin, Greek, French, and lots of Italian (and English, of course). Some Chinese characters whose inclusion doesn’t make sense to me. Obviously, I never understand what they mean, but it just seems that, stylistically, they don’t make sense. This is an otherwise pretty European Canto (we are in the Pisan Cantos, now, aren’t we, after all?).

Some great stuff. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but the sounds are great. Pound’s been taking lessons from some of colleagues, I guess. Never really saw him as an aural poet before.

”  both eyes,  (the loss of)  and to find someone
who talked his own dialect.  We
talked of every boy and girl in the valley
but when he came back from leave
he was sad because he had been able to feel
all the ribs of his cow…”
this wind out of Carrara
is soft as un terzo cielo

Later:

                                     no overstrokes
no dolphin faster in moving
nor the flying azure of the wing’d fish under Zoagli
when he comes out into the air, living arrow.
and the clouds over the Pisan meadows