Ezra Pound's Translation of The Jewel Stairs' Grievance
Pound actually translated this poem by the Chinese poet Li Po. Here it is:
The jeweled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.
NOTES: Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.
The properties of the poem are exotic, but the tone, the syntax, and the music are entirely straightforward. Compared to a nineteenth-century English lyric, this eighth-century Chinese poem sounds modern. “The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance” shows how perfectly Li Po met Pound’s modernist criteria of directness and imagistic precision.
1) The poem builds its effects out of things set before the mind’s eye by naming them.
2) pound uses imagery perfectly to get his meaning across
3) Pound uses a human situation (lovers grief) in a colorful way
The poem is about a woman who's was waiting for her lover to come visit her but he didn't show up.
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