That is the substance of a very well-known hokku. Victor Plarr tells me that once, when he was walking over snow with a Japanese naval officer, they came to a place where a cat had crossed the path, and the officer said," Stop, I am making a poem." Which poem was, roughly, as follows: --
"The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:
(are like) plum-blossoms."
The words "are like" would not occur in the original, but I add them for clarity.
The "one image poem" is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work "of second intensity." Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence: --
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough."
看来,庞德就是照着日本人的俳句而写的。
又,火星说这首诗三行,诗名入诗。
按这两个情况,我稍看了点俳句的知识,俳句一个基本体例,以三句十七音为一首,首句五音,次句七音,末句五音。
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet,black bough.
庞德这三行诗,基本就是标准的俳句,音节大致是五、七、五。
原来英文是有俳句的,我这也是第一次知道。
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