The Cantos by Ezra Pound
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Sleep came to Wagadu for the first time through vanity, for the second time through falsehood, for the third time through greed and for the fourth time through dissension. Should Wagadu ever be found for the fifth time, then she will live so forcefully in the minds of men that she will never be lost again.
All of these ideas and images are plied together in the weave of Canto LXXIV : 4 times was the city rebuilded, Hooo Fasa
Gassir, Hooo Fasa dell’Italia tradita
now in the mind indestructible, Gassir, Hooo Fasa,
With the four giants at the four corners
and the four gates mid-wall Hooo Fasa
and a terrace the colour of stars (848/430)
The theme of death that opens The Pisan Cantos (in the so-called ‘Elegy for Mussolini’) is quickly joined to the prototypical theme of Odysseus’ voyage and the related idea of ‘periplum’ (from Greek periploos , literally a ‘sailing around’ – a listing in order of geographical coastal features to assist mariners on a voyage):
‘the great periplum brings in the stars to our shore.’
You who have passed the pillars and outward from Herakles
when Lucifer fell in N. Carolina.
if the suave air give way to scirocco
ΟΫ ΤΙΣ, ΟΫ ΤΙΣ? Odysseus
the name of my family. (838/425)