Speaker

Speaker:

“The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight
across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling
flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing
horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of
Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or
suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never
looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with
yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river
of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise
overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went
out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown,
the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in
wind.
The paired butterflies are already
yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.

The speaker of the poem is speaking to her husband in the form of a letter to him. By having her tell the story, especially in the form that is used, the poet allows the reader to know not only the story, but also the feelings involved. Since the poem tells a story of love and longing, the speaker chosen makes a difference. If Pound had decided to use a third person narrative, or have the speaker be someone who is witnessing the story taking place, the poem would be completely different. At the same time, if the story was told from the point of view of the husband who has left, the readers would not get the same emotions as the wife. The emotions that are shown throughout the poem are that of everlasting love. “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/Forever and forever and forever./Why should I climb the lookout?” While the wife tells her husband that she will never leave his side, she also tells him that if and when he is dead, she will not be able to move on to a new husband because she loves hers whole heartedly. Such is also suggested by the wife observing her surroundings. “The paired butterflies are already yellow with August”. The wife notices the pairing of the butterflies, a pairing that she lacks in her own life now that her husband is gone from her. Also, the butterflies are described as “yellow with August”, perhaps alluding to how they are aging with one another, something the wife dreams of doing with her own husband. The last lines of the poem show the reader how the speaker will do anything and go anywhere for her husband. The distance between the two locations must be large, showing the wife's one desire to meet up with her husband again.

“Lazarus Comes to Dinner” by Anonymous

Of course, I'm an oddity,
   not another one around.
   I've been there and back,
   and what's more, I stank.

   When I give a banquet,
   they come; no no-shows,
   no compelling them to come.
   No one without a wedding garment.

   Talk about a conversation piece!
   Sidelong glances
   as I break a crust of bread
   -- "Had he eaten with the angels?" --

   I raise my glass of wine,
   they nudge their neighbors
   -- "Can he be thirsty, who drank
   from the ultimate barrel?" --

   I speak to the Master about
   the price of barley -- "Do they share
   memories from the cave that would
   stupefy the mountains?" --

   OK, I have smudged the clear
   edges of reality, broken
   the quantum barrier? Only this I say:
   truth is a moving target.

In the case of this poem, the speaker is not just a nameless, faceless person but a literary allusion. The fact that the speaker is one that is relatively well known allows the poet to bypass telling the complete story of Lazarus. Instead, the poet wrote the poem from the point of view of the famous biblical character. Lazarus is able to overhear conversations from his fellow dinner guests that question the time he spent while dead before coming back to life. The questions are never answered by Lazarus, but the reader understands his feelings towards such questions that are asked behind his back. He seems to never give a second thought to those who ask the questions, he simply lives with the fact that he is an “oddity” and will always be treated differently from others.