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Ezra Pound - Marvoil
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A poor clerk I, `Arnaut the less` they call me,
And because I have small mind to sit
Day long, long day cooped on a stool
A-jumbling o` figures for Maitre Jacques Polin,
I ha` taken to rambling the South here.

The Vicomte of Beziers`s not such a bad lot.
I made rimes to his lady this three year:
Vers and canzone, till that damn`d son of Aragon,
Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging
His helmet at Beziers.
Then came what might come, to wit: three men and one woman,
Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady
Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers,
And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal
To the end that you see, friends:

Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers
Bored to an inch of extinction,
Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier,
Me! in this damn`d inn of Avignon,
Stringing long verse for the Burlatz;
All for one half-bald, knock-knee`d king of the Aragonese,
Alfonso, Quattro, poke-nose.

And if when I am dead
They take the trouble to tear out this wall here,
They`11 know more of Arnaut of Marvoil
Than half his canzoni say of him.
As for will and testament I leave none,
Save this: ‘Vers and canzone to the Countess of Beziers
In return for the first kiss she gave me.`
May her eyes and her cheek be fair
To all men except the King of Aragon,
And may I come`speedily to Beziers
Whither my desire and my dream have preceded me.

O hole in the wall here! be thou my jongleur
As ne`er had I other, and when the wind blows,
Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers,
For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with this parchment,
So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes,
And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly my thought.

Wherefore, O hole in the wall here,
When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow
That I have not the Countess of Beziers
Close in my arms here.
Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment.

O hole in the wall here, be thou my jongleur,
And though thou sighest my sorrow in the wind,
Keep yet my secret in thy breast here;
Even as I keep her image in my heart here.
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