Charles

Duncan creates a perfect Imagist poem with that first strophe you quoted:>

 "A cat's purr
> in the hwirr thkk  'thgk, thkk'
>    of Kirke's loom on Pound's Cantos
>               'I heard a song of that kind...'

I can see the weaver's cat, one of Pound's favorite animals, contentedly
napping while the weaver works away.  The cat's purr giving a drone or
continuum to the melody of the shuttle and the clack of the loom.   The
dolcimer, the bag pipe and the organ make much use of a drone as a continuum
to hold the melodic elements together.  Baroque music which makes much use
of the continuum was Pound's favorite.  In "The Lasting Contribution of Ezra
Pound" Duncan quotes Pound from, "A Retrospect",  *a sort of residue of
sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more of less as an
organ base.*   Duncan would say "a cat's purr".    (BTW: also note the rhyme
in the phrase "ear of the hearer" which creates an internal rhythm for
Pound's prose and which lasts in the auditory sense of the reader for the
length of the sentence: it drones.   And, note the appropriateness of the
rhyme ear/hearer, the ear being integral to hearing)

Somewhere I have read that Pound's funeral music used bagpipes.  Please
correct me if I'm wrong.

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM