Ezra Pound: Canto CXIII: preparation for sky burial

Vultures flock overhead as ethnic Tibetans gather for a sky burial near the Larung valley, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. Relatives and onlookers gather for sky burials in which bodies of deceased people are offered to vultures. Such burials are practiced by some Tibetans and Mongolians in China as an extreme type of Buddhist “self-sacrifice almsgiving”. It is believed that feeding vultures with decomposed corpses of relatives on top of a mountain is a respectful way to pay tribute to passed-away beloved ones: photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters, 3 November 2015

Thru the 12 Houses of Heaven
                   seeing the just and the unjust,
                   tasting the sweet and the sorry,
Pater Helios turning.  
“Mortal praise has no sound in her ears”
                                                  (Fortuna’s)
θρήνος
And who no longer make gods out of of beauty
θρήνος     this is a dying
Yet to walk with Mozart, Agassiz and Linnaeus
‘neath overhanging air under sun-beat
Here take thy mind’s space
And to this garden, Marcella, ever seeking by petal, by leaf-vein
                 out of dark, and toward half-light

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise
Rock’s world that he saved us for memory
                   a thin trace in high air
And with them Paré (Ambroise) and the Men against Death
Twedell, Donnelly,
                         old Pumpelly crossed Gobi
“no horse, no dog, and no goat.”

“I’d eat his liver, told that son of...
and now bigod I have done it”                   
                                            17 Maggio,
                                                            why not spirits?
But for the sun and serenitas
                                   (19th May ’59)
H.D. once said “serenitas"
                                      (Atthis, etc.)
                     at Dieudonné’s
                                            in pre-history.
No dog, no horse, and no goat,
The long flank, the firm breast
                             and to know beauty and death and despair
and to think that what has been shall be,
                              flowing, ever unstill.

Then a partridge-shaped cloud over dust storm.
The hells move in cycles,
                               No man can see his own end.
The Gods have not returned. “They have never left us.”
                                They have not returned.
Cloud’s processional and the air moves with their living.
Pride, jealousy and possessiveness              
                      3 pains of hell
and a clear wind over garofani
                      over Portofino 3 lights in triangulation
Or apples from Hesperides fall in their lap
                      from phantom trees.
The old Countess remembered (say 1928)
                      that ball in St. Petersburg
and as to how Stef got out of Poland...
                      Sir Ian told ‘em help
                                          would come via the sea
(the black one, the Black Sea)
                                          Pétain warned ‘em.
And the road under apple-boughs
                      mostly grass-covered
And the olives to windward
                                Kalenda Maja.
Li Sao, Li Sao, for sorrow
            but there is something intelligent in the cherry-stone
Canals, bridges, and house walls
                                             orange in sunlight
But to hitch sensibility to efficiency:
                      grass versus granite,
For the little light and more harmony
Oh God of all men, none excluded
and howls for Schwundgeld in the Convention
                                                    (our Constitutional
                                                      17...whichwhat)
Nothing new but their ignorance,
                              ever perennial
Parsley used in the sacrifice
           and (calling Paul Peter) 12%
           does not mean one, oh, four, 104%
Error of chaos. Justification is from kindness of heart
            and from her hands floweth mercy.
As for who demand belief rather than justice.
And the host of Egypt, the pyramid builder,
                      waiting there to be born.
No more the pseudo-gothic sprawled house
                          out over the bridge there
                                   (Washington Bridge, N.Y.C.)
                             but everything boxed for economy.
That the body is inside the soul --
                            the lifting and folding brightness       
                                    the darkness shattered,
                                             the fragment,
That Yeats noted the symbol over that portico
                                                              (Paris)
And the bull by the force that is in him --
                  not lord of it,
                           mastered.
And to know interest from usura
(Sac. Cairoli, prezzo giusto)
                  In this sphere is Giustizia.
In mountain air the grass frozen emerald
                    and with the mind set on that light
                                 saffron, emerald,
                                                      seeping.
“but that kind of ignorance” said the old priest to Yeats
    (in a railway train) “is spreading every day from the schools” --
    to say nothing of other varieties.
Article X for example -- put over, and 100 years to get back
                                                           to the awareness of
                                         (what’s his name in that Convention)
And in thy mind beauty,
                                        O Artemis.
As to sin, they invented it -- eh?
                                         to implement domination
eh? largely.
                  There remain grumpiness,
                  malvagità
Sea, over roofs, but still the sea and headland.
And in every woman, somewhere in the snarl is a tenderness.
                                                 A blue light under stars.
The ruined orchards, trees rotting. Empty frames at Limone.
And for a little magnanimity somewhere,
And to know the share from the charge
                                  (scala altrui)
God’s eye art ‘ou, do not surrender perception.
And in thy mind beauty, O Artemis
                Daphne afoot in vain speed.
When the Syrian onyx is broken.
             Out of dark, thou, Father Helios, leadest,
but the mind as Ixion, unstill, ever turning.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972: Canto CXIII, May 1959

Syrian onyx: an Ammonite, or Fossil shell (from a photograph). These curious shells are found embedded in the cream-colored chalk, or limestone cliffs of Palestine. This specimen was found among the mountains of Galilee. It is apparently A. Syriacus, with a Nerinea Syr. turretted  shell on the side and a Natica Syr. or Turritella Syr. on the end: Image from page 362 of The Bible hand-book: an introduction to the study of Sacred Scripture (1883): image by Internet Book Archive Images

 

 Mezquita de Córdoba, España: photo by Jim Gordonl,  30 October 2008

 Ammonite shell under cross polarized light: photo by Captain Tenneal, 8 November 2008

Vultures in Africa and Europe could face extinction within our lifetime, conservationists have warned. Veterinary drug diclofenac that wiped out 99% of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal, has been commercially available in at least two European countries. And in Africa they are facing increasing threats mainly due to poisoning.:photo by Ramon Elosegui/BirdLife International via The Guardian, 12 September 2014

Beautiful Egyptian #Vulture in #Greece. Thanks to @Birdwingeu for photo: image via WildHils @WildHils, 29 October 2015



Aerial view of Turkey Vulture gliding over forested area, Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, Texas: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 12 April 2008

CONSERVATION: 11 of #Africa's #Vulture species are flying towards extinction @Ken_Birdlife: image via Wako Joel @WajoJoel, 29 October 2015

Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), beak sideview: photo by Thermos, 2006
 

Traditional Tibetan Sky Burial in which vultures pick clean the bones of the dead: photo by Alistair Coombs via Ancient Origins. 27 October 2015

The Vulture Stone, Göbekli Tepe archeological site, southeast Turkey. The vulture pictogram is one of the most graphically charged and complex reliefs so far excavated at the site. Müslüm Ercan describes the scene as a sky burial, in which the ‘soul’, sometimes symbolized as a head, is figuratively carried up to the sky world.: photo by Alistair Coombs via Ancient Origins, 27 October 2015

In Rock's World: A lovers' sky burial

Panel from Naxi pictographic manuscript containing myths detailing Sacrifices to the Highest Deity (lovers' suicide ritual): [Yunnan Sheng][1500?-1934]; transliteration and translation by Joseph F. Rock (Naxi Collection, Asian Division, Library of Congress)



And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise. Yulong Xueshan on the left, rising above Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China: photo by ZiCheng Xu, 28 December 2006

House where Joseph Rock lived in old Lijiang, Yunnan, China: photographer unknown, 29 July 1998, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)



Rock's World that he saved us for memory / a thin trace in high air: Joseph F. Rock with some of his Naxi assistants: photographer unknown, 14 November 1928, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)



Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The backbone of the Min Shan Range, Gansu, China: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 18 October 1926, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)



Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The Snow Peaks of the Liang-chow Nan Shan, Gansu, China: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 11 November 1925, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)



Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The Ta-pan Shan Range, Gansu, China: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 9 October 1925, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)



And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise: Lijiang Snow Mountain summit, Yunnan, China:photo by Corymgrenier, 22 October 2009