Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts)
IV
Scattered Moluccas*
Not knowing, day to day,
The first day's end, in the next noon;
The placid water
Unbroken by the Simoon**;

Thick foliage
Placid beneath warm suns,
Tawn fore-shores
Washed in the cobalt of oblivions;

Or through dawn-mist
The grey and rose
Of the juridical
Flamingoes**;

A consciousness disjunct,
Being but this overblotted
Series
Of intermittences;

Coracle of Pacific voyages,
The unforecasted beach;
Then on an oar
Read this:

" I was
And I no more exist;
Here drifted
An hedonist."

* The Molukka Islands are a group of spice-producing islands in the Malay Archipelago.
** Simoon...Flamingoes - Espey concludes that the primary source of Mauberley's tropical vision is Flaubert's "Salammbô".
(c)