A Pound of Cure

Some of Ezra Pound's greatest poems are his translations--especially of Chinese and Latin poets. In defense and proof of this assertion, I give you:

This monument will outlast metal and I made it
More durable than the king's seat, higher than pyramids.
Gnaw of the wind and rain?
Impotent
The flow of years to break it, however many.

Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral,
O Libitina-Persephone and, after that,
Sprout new praise. As long as
Pontifex and the quiet girl pace the Capitol
I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus
Lashes, and Daunus ruled the parched farmland:

Power from lowliness: "first brought Aeolic song to Italian fashion"--
Wear pride, work's gain. O Muse Melpomene,
By your will bind the laurel.
My hair, Delphic laurel.

Horace, Odes, Book III

--Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems & Translations, New Directions, 2010, page 280

Some notes: This ode by Horace is a powerful reminder that the word music is derived from "muse" (Melpomene), whom the poet invokes for inspiration to his song by which he "binds the laurel" (i.e., coheres the world). I love the last line ("My hair, Delphic laurel"), which signifies full oracular power granted and active in the poet. The ode is a kind of ascent during which the power most manifest in poetry confers indestructible beauty and immortality: "Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral, / O Libitina-Persephone (Libitina is the Greek goddess of death and Persephone a Greek goddess of the underworld]..." "I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus [a long, winding Roman River whose name was taken from the Greek word for snake) / Lashes, and Daunus [one of three mythical Greek brothers who conquered eastern Italy and named a portion of it after himself] ruled the parched farmland."