Anima Sola, by Ezra Pound

Believe it or not, there are some items you cannot find on the Internet. I am reading "Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound" and I came across a wonderful poem titled "Anima Sola". Surprisingly, it is nowhere to be found on the Internet. So I post it here. Enjoy!

Anima Sola

"Then neither is the bright orb of the sun greeted nor yes either the shaggy might of earth or sea, thus then, in the firm vessel of harmony is fixed God, a sphere, round, rejoicing in complete solitude."

                                                                                                                   Empedokles

Exquisite loneliness

Bound of mine own caprice

I fly on the wings of an unknown chord

            That ye hear not, 

            Can not discern

My music is weird and untamed

Barbarous, wild, extreme, 

I fly on the note that ye hear not

On the chord that ye can not dream. 

And lo, your out-worn harmonies are behind me

            As ashes and mouldy bread, 

I die in the tears of the morning

            I kiss the wail of the dead.

My joy is the wind of heaven, 

            My drink is the gall of night, 

My love is the light of meteors;

            The autumn leaves in flight. 

I pendant sit in the vale of fate

    I twine the Maenad strands

And lo, the three Eumenides

            Take justice at my hands.

For I fly in the gale of an unknown chord.

The blood of light is God's delight

And I am the life blood's ward. 

O Loneliness, O Loneliness, 

Thou boon of the fires blown

From heaven to hell and back again

Thou cup of the God-man's own!

For I am a weird untamed 

That eat of no man's meat

My house is the rain ye wail against

            My drink is the wine of sleet. 

My music is your disharmony

            Intangible, most mad, 

For the clang of a thousand cymbals

Where the sphinx smiles o'er the sand, 

            And viol strings that out-sing kings

Are the least of my command. 

Exquisite, alone, untrammeled

I kiss the nameless sign

And the laws of my inmost being

            Chant to the nameless shrine. 

I flee on the wing of a note ye know not, 

My music disowns your law, 

Ye can not tread the road I wed

And lo! I refuse your bidding. 

I will not bow to the expectation that ye have. 

Lo! I am gone as a red flame into the mist, 

My chord is unresolved by your counter-harmonies.

Source: art.com