Canto XLIX: For the Seven Lakes

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For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
  Rain; empty river; a voyage,
  Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
  Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
  The reeds are heavy; bent;
  and the bamboos speak as if weeping.

  Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes
  against sunset
  Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
  a blurr above ripples; and through it
  sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
  a cold tune amid reeds.
  Behind hill the monk's bell
  borne on the wind.
  Sail passed here in April; may return in October
  Boat fades in silver; slowly;
  Sun blaze alone on the river.

  Where wine flag catches the sunset
  Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

  Comes then snow scur on the river
  And a world is covered with jade
  Small boat floats like a lanthorn,
  The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin
  they are a people of leisure.

  Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,
  Clouds gather about the hole of the window
  Broad water; geese line out with the autumn
  Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,

  A light moves on the north sky line;
  where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.
  In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.
  A light moves on the South sky line.

  State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?
  This is infamy; this is Geryon.
  This canal goes still to TenShi
  Though the old king built it for pleasure

  K E I M E N R A N K E I
  K I U M A N M A N K E I
  JITSU GETSU K O K W A
  T A N FUKU T A N K A I

  Sun up; work
  sundown; to rest
  dig well and drink of the water
  dig field; eat of the grain
  Imperial power is? and to us what is it?

  The fourth; the dimension of stillness.
  And the power over wild beasts.

© Ezra Pound