John K, Taber writes "so far as I know nobody kills Chinese dragons."
    Yes, Europeans have been known to kill just about everything they could
get their hands on including each other, and Americans don't need much
prompting to jump into the fray.
    But the best description of the Chinese dragon I have run across is
still in the first hexagram of the I Ching - Ch'ien/ The Creative and
embodiment of the Yang side of the coin especially applicable to this season
of the year. This is what all our dragons, east and west, have in common -
their association with the creative forces (waters of life) and the cycles
of time and this is why they do not fit into the Xtian Weltanschauung of
eschatological doomsday linear time.
    But does Pound make the dragon image his enemy, usury? And does this
make him in his own estimation the hero who will challenge this dragon but
end up loosing "his center fighting the world"?
    If so, then the Cantos fail as "historical" epic for they do not close
(kleo)  the circle  in resolute victory of the hero. The muse Clio
(etymologically from cleo) has not sustained Pound.
    But do they fail as a poetic epic?  For the muse Calliope (beautiful
visage) at least gives the old man the countenance of sageful face with eyes
that seem to say "they have seen".  DRAKON Gk. "dragon" but alos the past
perfect infinitive of the verb "derkomai" "to see" hence " to have seen".
 Pound will have critics enow but  as the German-Pole Nietzsche ask, "When
did ever a dragon die from the sting of a serpent?"

Charles Moyer