55 Poems (1941)
As
LZ explains in a terminal note (73), “Song 29” mentions that he had written
only 23 of the planned 29 songs by the 29 Jan. 1933 deadline he had set
himself, which at the time he believed to be his 29th birthday (see note to “Song 29 N.Y.”).
Although he wrote the remaining poems during 1933 and early 1934, he left these
poems out of the original book publication of 55 Poems by J.A. Decker in 1941, but adding an abbreviated version
of the current note. The missing poems were Songs 11, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 and
account for the 61 poems in the current collection.
Despite
the suggestion of a distinction in genre, the division into 29 Poems and 29 Songs appears determined more by date of composition: the former
composed between 1924-1929 and the latter 1931-1934. “’Further than’–“, which
strictly speaking falls outside either grouping, is the only poem in the volume
from 1935.
7 [Persian
epigraph]: this is a rubai in the
original Persian by Omar Khayyám (1048-1123); it is written in Basil Bunting’s
hand, who suggested LZ use it when they met in Rapallo in Aug. 1933 (Booth 35).
Penberthy gives the following unacknowledged translation, but probably by
Bunting: “We cannot speak out as many of the world’s secrets as are in our
ledger. It would bring calamity upon us. Because there is not, amongst these
learned people, one with sense, not everything that is in our mind can be
uttered” (130). Sister Victoria Marie Forde mentions that Bunting sent LZ a
phonetic transcription of this poem on 30 Aug. 1933, but apparently without the
original Persian or a translation (“The Translations and Adaptations of Basil
Bunting,” in Carroll F. Terrell, ed. Basil
Bunting: Man and Poetry. National Poetry Foundation, 1981: 326).
I believe this is the same rubai
Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) renders as #32 in most editions of his Rubáiyat; the following is the 1879 (4th
edition) version:
There was the Door to which I found no Key:
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
There was--and then no more of THEE and ME.
In All, this Persian epigraph is
printed on the same page as the title and notes for “Poem beginning ‘The,’” as
if it belongs with this poem, but this is likely an error.
