In the subway station
The appearance of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on wet black branches.
These faces flashed in the crowd like a mirage;
Count the petals on the wet black branches.
In the subway station is an image poem with only two lines 14. This was written by Pound according to his impression of the subway station in Place de la Concorde in Paris. Although this poem is very short, it took the poet quite a long time to brew and think before he finally put pen to paper.
At the subway station, beautiful faces flashed in front of Pound. On the way home, these faces appeared in front of his eyes again and again, until at last they gradually became pieces of color printed background. At this time, he had an idea that he wanted to make a non-realistic painting with mottled colors, but he couldn't draw, so he could only use poetry instead. The two lines of this poem are interdependent. Phantom is an illusion, a kind of ghost, which reminds people of the faces of passengers coming and going. The petals in the second row convey a beautiful message. These information are highlighted by the contrast of dark branches, and at the same time give people a feeling of fuzzy overlap, which makes the artistic conception more full.
This poem is very similar to19th century French impressionism. Readers can draw a colorful picture if they read it repeatedly. At the same time, we will find that poetry is very clever in sound processing. The [p] sound in the first line echoes the [p] sound in the second line, but one of them only constitutes an unstressed syllable; There is an [[〔au〕] sound at the end of both lines, but the former has a consonant [d] and the latter does not. The repetition of the sound [e] in the second line strengthens the musical sense of this short poem. Compared with the petals hanging from the wet black branches, the face that flashed before his eyes reflected the poet's convincing imagination.