1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Statue by Carl Milles

Hast thou 2 loaves of bread
Sell one + with the dole
Buy straightaway some hyacinths
To feed thy soul.

Ezra Pound (1885 –1972) was one of the most influential but also most difficult poets of the 20th century.

If you think this doesn’t look like like your typical Ezra Pound poem, you’re right. It’s not. Or not really. It seems that Pound reworked an old poem by James Terry White, called “Not By Bread Alone” (1907).

If thou of fortune be bereft,
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves—sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

James Terry White

You can read the whole story here. Which version do you like best? I’m partial to Pound’s version myself.

To read more poems, click here.