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This poem, as well
as the last poem,

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makes reference to
the fact that Pound,

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who was charged with
treason during World War II,

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spent a number of years after
the war in a mental institution

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in Washington DC.

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OK, this is the final poem
I'll read from the collection.

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It's "Chinese
Silence Number 99,"

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and it's after one of
Pound's most famous poems,

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"The River Merchant's
Wife, a Letter."

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When my verse was still laid
out in straight pentameters,

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I played about with
Provencal, growling ballads.

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You whispered in cribbed
notes, saying "horse."

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You drew about my feet
the ideogram for "plum,"

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and we started writing
in the style of imagism,

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three small rules without
ornament or description.

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In '15, I published my Li Po.

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I tried to speak,
and out came silence.

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Lowering my head, I
rammed the Great Wall.

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Corrected 1,000 times,
I never looked back.

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In '17, I said, hang it all.

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I desired my poems to be garbed
and yours forever, and forever,

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and forever.

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Why should I be held to account?

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In '45, I departed.

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I went far into Washington, by
the river of cold forgetting,

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and you have not come to visit.

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The critics make self-righteous
noise at the door.

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You bound my feet
when you went out.

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By my book now, the glosses grow
the different glosses, too many

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to clear them away.

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The leaves fall, and I try
to keep them from falling.

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The manuscript pages are
turning yellow with peril

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under the covers of
the West's sick bed.

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They desert me.

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I grow silent.

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If you are coming down through
the narrows of the Potomac,

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please call me your
Confucius, and I

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will come out to meet
you as far as Arlington.

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