O fan of white silk,
 clear as frost on the grass-blade,

 You also are laid aside.

Note: Based on a 1st century BC Chinese poem

A wonderful poem - the clean, austere beauty of the first two lines balanced perfectly against the quiet understatement of the final one.

Note the simultaneous minimalism and density of the images - the softness of silk contrasting with the crystalline brittleness of frost, the wintry overtones of white and frost, suggesting in the fan a perfection born of unadornedness - and the way they combine into a self-contained whole.

The Oriental feel of the original is captured beautifully - the rather poignant apostrophe to the fan, the woman’s quiet acceptance of her fate, are enhanced by the almost Japanese minimalism of the imagery.

Another point of note is the poem’s title, which makes a more than usually significant contribution to the whole. For one, it sets the scene, a needed factor in a poem this short. Secondly, the use of the word ‘for’ gives the poem an added poignancy, and a certain quiet dignity, suggesting as it does an offering to the Imperial Lord who has laid her aside. Again, the phrase ‘her Imperial Lord’ suggests that the Lord may have laid the poet aside, but she is not to be afforded a similar privilege - an inequity, of course, very much in keeping with the poem’s setting¹.

Construction

Not quite a haiku, but (as the link below suggests in greater detail), definitely influenced by the form.

Links

http://www.fwkc.com/encyclopedia/low/articles/p/pf.html has a short discussion of the poem.

We’ve run several of Pound’s poems in the past; of particular interest today is his ‘River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’, poem #70 which also has a biography of Pound.

Afterthought

If anyone knows something about the original this poem was based on, do write in.

— Martin