Every so often I read a poem that wrecks my heart, and Ezra Pound caused my latest heartbreak with this stunning epistolary poem:
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter Ezra Pound After Li Po 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 Chōkan: 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-tō-en, 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 Chō-fū-Sa.
This poem is far from perfect. The place names, for instance, could be right or wrong, as Pound idealized Eastern poetry but didn’t understand how to correctly translate Asian locations into English.
Upon reading this poem, however, it is impossible for me to believe he is belittling or stereotyping Asian culture. In this work I hear an almost reverent voice from an awestruck poet. He deeply admires the imagery and emotion of Eastern poems and wants them to be read and emulated.
In this poem, Pound is most concerned with several thematic elements: the passage of time, learning to love, and aging. These he accomplishes through an epistolary exploration of images: childhood, the seasons, and flora and fauna.
Pound’s mode for this poem—a letter—is significant; this structure personalizes the message and puts the reader in the shoes of the wife. What is she writing? Words of loneliness and appeal. They float. (The river is not just literal.) Readers do not know whether the pleas will ever land on the intended ears.
The Passage of Time
Time is the central agent of this poem—years of life, the changing of seasons, love growing over time, the passage of months, physical aging, awaiting a return.
For a free verse poem, “River” has a surprising amount of parallelism, namely, years of life. The letter writer progresses from age fourteen to age sixteen in the space of three stanzas. In that time, she marries her husband, the river merchant. A whole year of marriage passes before she learns to love him. The fourth and final stanza is the conclusion of the context: the letter writer’s husband departed when she was sixteen, and she has not seen him since.
Pound successfully highlights the beauty of falling in love, even slowly, but also the pain of losing a partner, even temporarily. To love someone is to open yourself to the heavy reality that one day that person will be gone.
But the speaker’s husband may yet return. In the meantime, the wife ages. She grows physically older. She ages emotionally and psychologically, too, from the heaviness of the wait. And as the writer ages, so does her environment.
The Intentionality of the Imagery
The Gate. Never can a true Imagist become too distant from a central picture. Pound contrasts childhood and the present using the recurring image of a gate. Once the letter writer pulled flowers by the gate as a child. But now the mosses have overtaken the gate, and the roots are so deep she cannot remove them.
The Seasons. Then there is the symbolic decline in Autumn, a change from the Spring-like pictures of the first stanza. The leaves are falling early; gone are the flowers and blue plums of childhood.
The Butterflies. Finally, the poem’s volta emerges—the paired butterflies. They are a couple, the sight of which harms the writer, who is alone. (They hurt me.) But similar to the speaker, the butterflies are also aging, becoming yellow with August.
The Heart of the Poem
Taken together, these structural and concrete elements unveil the heart of the poem: the letter writer misses her husband, who has gone away, leaving her behind to grow old without him.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back, says the letter writer of her fourteen-year-old self. Yet most of her letter is a looking backward, a painful remembering of the couple’s shared childhood and early marriage.
As a fourteen-year-old newlywed, the river merchant’s wife never laughed, being bashful. And she is certainly not laughing now. She is, however, bolder. Lowering her head, she looked at the wall as a child. But now she is sorrowfully watchful.
Why should I climb the lookout? asks the letter writer at fifteen. Yet as she writes the letter, she has a reason to do so. She misses her husband so much, in fact, that she would not only look out for him, but would rather go out to meet him herself—as far as Chō-fū-Sa.
Pound never wrote an epistolary poem in response to the wife. So the letter stands alone, just as the wife does—one tiny voice amid the river of so many other voices. The poem is so lonely.
Yet “River” is also a poem of ambivalence, one of delight and of sorrow. This in-between place is the dream home of poetry—a sweet spot that is difficult for poems to inhabit. Ezra Pound lived there.
The Father of Imagism
As most of my contemporaries do, I have a begrudging admiration for Ezra Pound. The field of poetry owes so much to someone so misguided and hateful in his personal beliefs. In spite of this, Pound wrote stunning work, altering the landscape of poetry forever through his founding of the Imagist movement.
Many of Pound’s pieces, including “River,” helped to popularize Eastern influence in Modern poetry. Despite his often-inaccurate “translations” of Chinese poems, Pound was the first Western poet to successfully break the poetry barrier between the East and the West. He paved the way for Eastern poets to be read, translated, and celebrated, giving Eastern poems a reach far beyond Chō-fū-Sa.
As for Pound’s own work, “River” paints a stunning picture of change and the all-too-human emotions that arise from it. Sorrow and joy are kin. Life is full of loss—but loveliness is not absent.
Beauty is ever-present in the yellowing tones of Autumn. It is carved into the weathered, mossy stones of an ancient gate. And most of all, it is woven along the wistful longing of a heart whose desires are unfulfilled.
Who knows when the fulfillment may be, or whether the return will happen? Ezra Pound invites us to watch and wait and grow old in the name of love. Meanwhile—ageless—the river rolls on, singing a song of the vast beauty and the deep sadness of being.