THE EXILE’S POEM by Ezra Pound

Way back in the last century Ezra Pound stumbled on the writings of a 19th Century scholar of Asian Art, Ernest Fenollosa. The historian came from Salem and after graduated from Harvard traveled to Japan with the Orientalist and naturalist Edward Sylvester Morse, who developed a great love for ceramics during his stay at Tokyo’s Imperial University.

Japan underwent great changes during the Meiji Dynasty.

The kingdom welcomed the West.

The fall of the Shogunate destroyed the Samurai.

They became ronin or outlaws.

Worse happened to China under the invasion of the Gwai-loh, but in 1913 Ezra Pound lived in London, where he met Ernest Fenollosa’s wife. She gave WB Yeats’ assistant her husband’s notes and he constructed CATHAY by creating a supposedly modernist version of the ancient classics by using the technique of Ideogrammic method.

木 or tree met 日 or sun to become the light of sunset trapped in the leaves.

The man was capable of great thought as well as madness.

I have always loved these faux translations

Especially THE EXILE’S POEM

The poem has been attributed to Li Po, usually considered the greatest poet of China: written by him while in exile about 760 A. D., to the Hereditary War-Councillor of Sho, “recollecting former companionship.”


SO-KIN of Rakuho, ancient friend, I now remember
That you built me a special tavern,
By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.
With yellow gold and white jewels
we paid for the songs and laughter, 5
And we were drunk for month after month,
forgetting the kings and princes.
Intelligent men came drifting in, from the sea
and from the west border,
And with them, and with you especially,
there was nothing at cross-purpose;
And they made nothing of sea-crossing
or of mountain-crossing,
If only they could be of that fellowship.
And we all spoke out our hearts and minds …
and without regret.
And then I was sent off to South Wei,
smothered in laurel groves,
And you to the north of Raku-hoku,
Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories between us.
And when separation had come to its worst
We met, and travelled together into Sen-Go
Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters;
Into a valley of a thousand bright flowers …
that was the first valley,
And on into ten thousand valleys
full of voices and pine-winds.
With silver harness and reins of gold,
prostrating themselves on the ground,
Out came the East-of-Kan foreman and his company;
And there came also the “True-man” of Shi-yo to meet me,
Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ.
In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us
more Sennin music;
Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix broods.
And the foreman of Kan-Chu, drunk,
Danced because his long sleeves
Wouldn’t keep still, with that music playing.
And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap,
And my spirit so high that it was all over the heavens. And all this comes to an end,
And is not again to be met with.
I went up to the court for examination,
Tried Layu’s luck, offered the Choyu song,
And got no promotion,
And went back to the East Mountains white-headed.

And once again we met, later, at the South Bridge head.
And then the crowd broke up—you went north to San palace.
And if you ask how I regret that parting?
It is like the flowers falling at spring’s end,
confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking—
There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees to write and seal this,
And I send it a thousand miles, thinking.

I know that land of exile well.

No drink.

No women.

No future.

Here’s Li Po’s poem FAREWELL TO A FRIEND.

Green mountains
steeple across the North Wall.
White riverwater
rushes round the city’s east end.

From this place
once we part, a lone
tumbleweed, my friend
will be tossed ten thousand miles.

Like drifting clouds
his wanderer’s dreams.
Like the sinking sun
his old friend’s heart.


We wave hands
as he starts away, our horses
neighing to each other
as we shout our last goodbyes.

In the word of Gloria Gaynor.

NEVER CAN SAY GOOD-BYE.

She must have understood Li Po too.

To hear NEVER CAN SAY GOOD BYE, please go to this URL

May 15, 1990 Langtang Glacier – Nepal – Journal Entry

The trail has left behind the trees and flowers. The villagers are surrounded by millet and sorghum fields. Beyond this cultivation are rough fields of high-altitude grass. Yaks lazily chomp their cuds under the watch of young masters. They gather the yak paddies to dry in the sun. The main source of heat in the Himalayas. We have been transported back five-hundred years. Still no sign of civilization, except for bottled beers. Not a single TV antenna spout over the sturdy stone houses. None of them are made of wood.

At the first tea stop I wash my filthy sox in the raging river, careful not to fall into the savage torrent. Such an accident risked serious injury. Hiking with dirty sox in my boots feels like I walking in mud. I switch to flip-flops, same as the sherpas. The trail is easy as we have entered a broad valley.

My thoughts of losing weight by trekking were ruined by the constant eating to fuel the uphill trek. I have gained a few kilos and will have to be careful to not pack on more in Paris.

Still I’m in the best shape I’e been in after the months in Bali, Sumatra, Malaysia, and Thailand. My heart faithfully pumps blood into my oxygen-starved brain. I pissed and shit like a Sherpa. All my organs seem to be in working order and I’ve even relegated my brains down to my fifth favorite.

LATER

Another village. More doctoring. A lama has asked to see me. I go into a small house. the room is illuminated by yak butter oil lamps. Ancient prayer books and scriptures are stacked on the wood planked floor and the mud walls are covered with a pantheon of demonic illustrations. The lama is in his fifties, only a little old than me, but he looks eternal and serene.

Dorge translated his blessings.

“Some of the demons are good. Some bad. Nothing in between,”

“Like human beings.”

He has heard of my quack doctor routine. No one I treated has complained of my remedies to infected eyes, festering wounds, or my other gentle minstrations. I try to gie the lama my flashlight. He refuses with a smile saying he doesn’t want to defile the earth with discarded batteries. I’m probably one of countless foreigners who think giving is good, but there is no way anyone up this high could ever afford the batteries needed to use anything electric.

My father drove us a few times to Mt. Monadanock in lower New Hampshire. It’s height was less than three thousand, however the top was above the treeline and the taller White Mountains were visible to the north. My father entered the summit hut and read my words. The Maine native was instantly angry by my writing in the humble mountain’s guest book, “The view in for the birds.”

My father was very straight and regarded my sentences as anti-social behavior. He was right. I was on the path to ruin. I had never been higher in my young life and was hurt by my father’s lecture. The trails on Monadanock were well-traveled, yet every year someone dies stepping off the trail.

Here we are 3000 meters above the sea. Danger exists here from avalanches, falls, wild yaks, the winter cold, rock slides, and demons. I bow to the lama and step into the brilliant sun. Not a cloud in the sky.

I am a day’s hike from the glacier.

Last night I could read a book by the starlight.

I am as far as I will be from civilization on this trip.

Yet I am no uncivilized by this trek.

I’m just glad not to be in the white world.

I haven’t spoken to my family in Boston since calling them collect after my head-on motorcycle accident north of Chiang Mai. I said nothing about the crash. I had already chopped off the cast and the morphine pills killed the pain. I still had a few, but I’m saving them for the long flight to Paris.

My parents didn’t mention any mishaps on that phone call.

No bad here.

No bad there.

I intend on finishing THE BEST IS YET TO COME this summer.

Maybe someone will read it, so my parents know there second son is not a ne’er-do-well. Then again thee people up here think I’m a doctor. As was my grandfather. I join Dice and Dorge and Lance. We set off for the last stage.

The Langtang Glacier.

May 14, 1990 – Langtang Glacier – Nepal – Journal Entry

Published on: May 22, 2024

As promised the trek across the landslide was tricky. Loose shale and rocks under foot. Dorge said two houses had been swept away by the avalanche.

“No one was killed. One man still missing.”

He said this with resignation to the danger of living in the Himalayas.

Another trekker Miriam picks her way across the wasteland. Her feet are bleeding and her partner, an older German, doesn’t look in any better shape.

I slid a couple of times as did Lance.

The porters handled the damaged trail like mountain goats.

Reaching the bottom of the valley we crossed the river on a broken bridge. The current was ever fierce. Falling into the water meant drowning and I was glad to have safely negotiated the span.

At the next village an older woman greeted our passage by sticking out here tongue. Another trekker Dice aka Todd commented that maybe it was part of mating ritual. Our guide Dorge corrected him, “Here we know that devils have no tongue, so they stick out their tongue to show that they are not demons.”

“There are demons here.” Dice laughed at such an idea.

“Everywhere on my travels across Asia, everyone warned about the devils in the next valley. The worst are in Kathmandu repressing the uprising of the people, but those are human.”

“All the wooden masks in the villages are of demons.” Dorge stuck out his tongue.

I’ve never seen any demons other than in human forms, but I have seen ghosts.”

“You have???” Dorge was alarmed by this admission.

“I have and I’ll tell you a ghost story this evening.” Ghost stories work better around a fire in the dark. A glass of whiskey helped too.

A crowd of villagers waited by the school and motioned for my approach.

“They ave heard that you have medicine. None of them have seen a doctor in this life.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

Dorge shrugged with little concern for my being charged with malpractice.

“You have medicine. Only medicine here. Tiger balm.”

I agreed to the deception and treated infected eyes and hands and feet with antiseptics. I lanced small wounds swollen with pus. They bore the pain without a whimper. I gave a bottle of antiseptic ointment to the teacher, who expressed his gratitude with a solemn bow.

“How much medicine did you bring?” asked Dice. He had attended Cornell for Hotel Management. I had attended Boston College. My major had been Economics and graduated sin laude, but my grandfather had been a Maine doctor. My Irish namesake had been a trolley man in Boston. My only medical training was at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire. Thankfully no one had any broken bones or anything really serious.

“Enough to handle a hypochondriac’s ills.” I had enough to last me till the return to Kathmandu.

LATER

Resting by a prayer wall at another villager. I was a doctor again. Dorge explained that we are stopping too often, so I cut my clinic short by only tending to the children. Babies with coughs I gacve them a droplet of sweet syrup. They smile and wash their grimy faces. One old gent complained about a tooth ache. He opened his mouth to reveal rotten stumps. I gave him cloves for the pain and advised that he suck on them. He made a face tasting them, but upon my departure smiled with relief. They waved good-bye.

Ganchemao is the monster peak rising above the valley. Snow clumped in glaciers on the peak. The sun is torching my lips. Dice lends me lip balm.

“I have to take care of the doctor.”

“Then you can be my nurse.”


Later

I walked ahead of everyone. Even the porters. I want to be alone. The wind, the scent of pines and flowers, the world of sky peaks. I sneak peeks, because I am trekking on a narrow trail and pay attention to where I put my feet rather than trip and fall into a deadly valley. Lots of rocks. Twisting an ankle would be a disaster this far from the road. I stop and rest, regaining my breath. Our porters pass smoking cigarettes. I wait for a lagging trekker. Dieter is suffering from dysentery. He appears after fifteen minutes, looking like shit. I advise him to hire a porter. We are dismissing one at the next village. His pack is empty.

“You shits are only get worse.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it, but up to you.”

Miriam appears that she has abandoned the Sherpa way and is wearing her boots. A wise decision, but I can tell by her gait that she really savaged her feet. I offer to clean them and binding them with tape. She shakes her head not willing to admit she was wrong. Lance looks at me and we both shrug with no comment.

Best to let people do what they think is best.

LATER

We stopped for an afternoon tea. Each step up this valley transports us further back into medieval times. This could be 1452 AD. Yaks, the Sherpas’ beast of burden lumbered up and down the trail under heavy loads of up to a hundred-fifty pounds. Three times more than the Sherpa porters. I’m carrying about ten pounds and every step is a struggle. Dice is much younger than me and is handling the ascent to Langtang glacier with ease. Lance and I are in the same shape.

Crap.

I had to switch pens. I gave away two to young boys.

This is as faraway from civilization as I have been in my life. Far from Boston. Far from New York. As soon as I put my boots on the trail I was transported to the 15th Century. No telephones, no radio signal. No electricity other than our flashlights. No subways. No bagels. No diamonds on 47th Street.

Dice, who retired from Wall Street at 30, joins me in a squat on a boulder, and asked, “What do you think these people think of us. Trekking through their villages without stopping for more than a cup of tea and sleep.”

“They think of us a cash cow. Without us life would be even harder. They have been thinking the same as all travelers since before time. In good times lots of people. In bad times fewer and most of them bad.”

“And these are good times?”

“Be more trekkers, if Kathmandu was quiet.”

“My guide, Porterhouse, says nothing that happens in Kathmandu affects up here. Do you think these are good times?”

Nothing is burning and we don’t see any dead people. I had seen the soldiers shoot into a crowd in Kathmandu. They weren’t aiming over their heads. It’s peaceful up here. Normal times. Nothing special.”

We were surrounded by Rhododendrons. The huge flowers flourish in the high altitudes. I had won one in high school from a church raffle. The only thing I had ever won.

I looked up to the mountains, squinting in the high glare off the snow peaks. These villages weren’t flush with money. They never had any. Bad things happened. Bad things happened a lot. A sick child. A sick parent. A sick cow. The King opened Nepal to foreigners in 1951. The 50s hadn’t hit Langtang Valley yet. This trek isn’t too popular, since it dead-ends at the glacier. There is no crossing into the neighboring Helambu Valley.

“Maybe in ten years this valley might improved, but the only transport are by your feet, on the sherpa’s back, or a yak. These people are shackled to poverty, they are slaves to the lower altitude people, but they proudly live their lives as had their fathers and mothers. And do they want our lives?”

“I don’t, which is why I quit Wall Street.”

“Not after making a fortune.”

“I was lucky and left the casino before I gambled it away.”

“All the porters play cards. For their pay.”

“To be blessed by luck.”

“As are we all.”

May 14, 1990 – Langtang Glacier – Nepal – Journal Entry

Previously published May 23, 2023

2500 meters – Ghora Tabula

This morning Dieter woke up with vomit on his shirt. He doesn’t talk about being gay or having AIDS, but he has said anything about spending time in Bangkok. I respect his staying in the closet and told him that we are all sinners. Dieter had been traveling the last three years on $250/month to see as much of the world as he could before his immune system crashed. Dice worries that the German could die on this trek.

“It’s his choice. Life. Death all the same,” says Dorge.

I tell neither of them of his deadly sickness.

The higher we climb the worst the sun.

Thankfully I have lip balm from Dice and sunblock. Lance’s lips are painfully black and face scorched by the sun. I lend him mine. We stopped for lunch without any shade trees.The ports have rigged a shelter from tarps. The cook has once more provided a huge lunch. I had hoped to lose weight on this trek, but I think I’ve gained a few kilos. Dorge orders us to eat more to have energy. Our bodies are not used to this effort. The porters have been gorging on tsampas, daal bhaat, and Thukpa stew. Eating is the only fuel for our bodies. Our whiskey is finished and I’ve been sober for a few days.

The hippie teahouse trekkers regard us as heretics on the Asia on $5 a day guide book. All in our sherpas and guides and food cost us each $20 a day. Lance and I share our excess food with the children, who trail us from village to village. We only give Dieter food, because his body has been wracked by dysentery. He still refuses to turn back. Yesterday Miriam left him and attached herself to another group of backpackers.

Israelis.

These young men and women exit from their occupation service in Palestine with short hair. Their heads have sprouted Samson locks overnight. None of the teahouses will serve them food or allow them to stay in the rooms The Sherpas can’t stand these long-haired ex-soldiers, saying that they steal and cheat villagers every step of the way like they had invading another country.

Earlier in the year I had read in the International Herald Tribune how Pakistani tribesmen had kidnapped a group of Israeli backpackers. One of them shem broke free, grabbed an AK47 and killed all the militants and a few of his friends.

At the age of 18 they are drafted into the Israeli Army of Occupation Their army time kills their soul and this afternoon as I drank tea one of them came over to demand some.

Fuck off.”

I had heard how the Israelis on this trek all spoke of the Palestinians other than animals. I told this one that was the way the Nazis had spoken of the Jews during the Holocaust. The largest Israeli wanted to fight me. I held a rock in my hand. Lance defused the situation by saying we were all here to be one with the Himalayas.

After the dispute Dorge suggested that we avoid any contact and we let them tramp out of sight.

“Israelis always trouble.” Lance, a New York Jew, agreed and doesn’t have time for the either.

Miriam abandoned them and rejoined Dieter, who has employed one of extra Sherpas to carry his bag. The two of them would be perfectly cast as a gay monk followed by an insane nun in a medieval movie. It has been said that Tolkien’s books had been inspired by the Himalayas.

Miriam attended to Dieter.

It’s time for him to turn around.

He threw up blood.

Miriam is a saint for taking care of him. He is very brave to persist in this trekk. Almost as if will die when we reach Langtang Glacier.

Miriam kissed me after lunch behind a prayer wall.

“Thank you for taking care of Dieter.”

When we returned to group, the German glanced at my crotch. My zipper was still down. The retired school teacher smiled at me like he wished it had been with him. My left wrist has been broken in a motorcycle crash on the Burma-Thai border. I was lucky to be alive as was Dieter. I had hammered off the cast in a Patpong go-go bar. I lifted my crooked arm. It hadn’t healed yet I and said, “This makes everything harder.”

“So I see. I’m taking your advice. I’m going back down. Miriam is coming with me.”

“I’m glad to see you. Maybe we’ll meet someplace else. Maybe Kathmandu.”

“Vierleicht.”

Lance and I gave them food and we shook hands. Miriam kissed my cheek. Her sweat smelled sweet in the rare air. The three of them walked out of sight followed by a young beggar. That was the last I saw of them.

May 13, 1990 – Langtang Trek, Nepal – 1990 – Journal Entry

The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist with each parting of the clouds.

The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I’m not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin in Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, “Chag-po nang.”

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I’m sure like the Eskimos they have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

English is my only usable language in this valley other than hand signals, which I use whenever I treat people for cuts, festering wounds, and encrusted eyes. My thermometer amazing them, since I have to put in in their mouth. I usually stick out my tongue to show that I am not a demon. The last of my patients at this rest stop are watching me wash my sox. All these young boys and girls are all barefoot.

They waved good-bye, as we like every foreigner passing their village head higher to Kyangjin at the head of the valley.

We pass head-high prayer walls erected by faithful Buddhists. The porters mutter prayers and Dorzee says, “They not say these prayers. No one read Tibetan. Not read English. Only lamas read walls. No one here read. No one go school. Not have schools. Before we have many walls. Now not many. Everything not same. No grass, no yaks, no money, no carving.”

Something was not right in the mountains. The monsoons came at a different time and the snows were always late. For some reason every year was warmer.

A platoon of Nepali soldiers pass us on the trail. The sergeant talks with Dorzee, while the patrol hikes forward. After the sergeant’s departure, he says, “Still have trouble in Kathmandu> Most time never see soldiers up here. Government want to tell Sherpas they are in charge. They come and they go. They never stay.”

The villagers are Sherpa, Tibetan or Gurkha. They live on the other side of time. Far from the world below. Once the monsoons come the trekking season will be over and the porters will return the shoes and warm clothing to the Kathmandu agencies, then return to up mountain. The villages will retreat into the security of a past lost to the now.

The poverty increases every step forward. Life goes on as it has for millenia. Everyone is uneducated, illiterate, unwashed, malnourished, sick, wear rags, but they always have a smile for us. especially when I give a pen and paper or a postcard of Bali or Thailand to the children. So little will make them happy. I also have sweets. Several Lonely Planet backpackers have ventured reproached me for distributing these candies to the locals. They give no one nothing. Lance tells me to ignore them.

After the next tea stop the porters light cigarettes, swing the packs onto their backs. The loads are getting less and their pace is twice ours. All for $5/day.

Thankfully they are getting all that money, unless they lose it in cards.

The sun is setting over the high rim of Himalayas. It is a little colder than before and Lance and I have decide to sleep in the tea house. Still cold, but it’s out of the wind. We have run out of whiskey. Dice and I have switched to the milky millet beer. Tongba, which we drink around a blazing fire. Three cups and I’m feeling okay, glad to not humping on the trail and breathing easier at this altitude.

The porters are playing ‘Jhyap’, a take and discard card game whose which you play from the three best hands. Money is being waged by everyone. I have no interest n losing money and retire to my room. I am out cold at 8pm.

LATER

Dorge won 70 RPs. Labarai won even more from the porters and villagers. 200 Rupees. About three days of trekking wages and the losers have been losers all the way up the trail. None of them have the sneakers I bought them, but they still have cigarettes

I’ve worked hard, but not like the porters.

Working at the diamond exchange I never break a sweat. The heaviest thing I lift is a pencil or paper. I don’t want to work. I want to travel all the time, but I need money.

I wish I could sell my noVel NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Maybe I’ll be lucky in Paris, London, and New York. Maybe I’ll be able to sherry it to Monty. It really doesn’t matter. I’m four days away from civilization.