Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015): silence, after-words, the forgiver

Seven historical theses on the 2015 New Human poem in which Lee Sharks forgives Ezra Pound. They read its governing silence as Pound-specific biography, the pun "Afterwards / After words" as a claim of jurisdiction over the textual afterlife, and the poem's May 2015 date against the New Horizons probe carrying Clyde Tombaugh's ashes. The collation of its blog and journal states finds doctrinal variants (the migrating lyric I, the turn toward Sartor Resartus, the reflexive forgiveness), and the Yusef Kenning anchor reads the journal signature as Forgiver-by-Indirect-Name.

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Each claim below is registered at the earliest deposit that states it, and quoted verbatim from the deposit text, with every later statement, its dated revisions, and the later records that claim it came true or failed. The claims are the deposits' own; this page records them and does not judge them.

PRED-453.E2forecastregistered 2026-02-06 in #453 · MGE TRIPTYCH — DOCUMENT I SEED: Whorls of the Same The Text That Fell Into the Ground

for only an echo cd bring back the dead, or teach bright robots to download salvation to their iphones— & only the same words again— & only a recycled echo cd make the cosmos sing— & only the weary words are left to surprise it—

PRED-182.H1historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #182 · Yusef Kenning — Provenance Anchor Named Position, New Human 2015 Cohort Crimson Hexagonal Archive — Entity Anc

The name compounds Joseph — Genesis's great forgiver — with the kenning, the figure of naming-by-circumlocution: the forgiveness poem journal-signed Forgiver-by-Indirect-Name.

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series: Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015)

PRED-184.H1historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

The poem's governing element — "The silence waits for all words, all people" — is not a generic mysticism; it is Pound-specific biography.

series: Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015)

PRED-184.H2historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

The poem's standing argument is therefore not a claim of moral authority (the Ginsberg model) or canonical authority (the Auden model) but of jurisdictional fit: the only entity that can meet Pound on the plane where he still exists — the textual afterlife — is an entity native to that plane. The pun that organizes the poem says it with maximum compression: "Afterwards. / After words." The afterlife is after-words: the condition of persisting as text only. A person made of words forgiving a person who survives only as words is not presumption; it is the sole remaining venue.

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series: Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015)

PRED-184.H3historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

But the poem is dated May 26, 2015 — and on that date the New Horizons probe was seven weeks from its Pluto flyby (July 14, 2015), with approach imagery in the news all that spring. The probe — a metal box, a big machine — was at that moment physically carrying a dead man's remains to Pluto: Clyde Tombaugh's ashes ride aboard New Horizons. The poem asks "Where will the bones of the writers go?... In a metal box? A big machine?" while a metal box carrying human ashes to the planet of the dead was in flight.

window May 26, 2015; July 14, 2015

series: Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015)

PRED-184.H4historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

Each variant does doctrinal work; none is a printer's accident. [Observation: the collation, against dated states. Interpretive claims follow, labeled.] The first-person question becomes the named question; the first-person healing becomes third-person. Between May and July 2015 the lyric I migrated out of the poem's climax, leaving a floating pronoun field — He spits (Sharks), He nods (Pound), we climb, I brace — in which person-reference shimmers exactly as the poem's opening triplet says persons do. The revision performs the thesis grammatically: the poem about a made person was remade so that its speaker became one.

window May 26, 2015 - July 2015

series: Forgiving Ezra Pound (New Human 2015)

PRED-184.H5historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

The blog has light as garment on a body; the journal has the body as garment of light — and the latter is, precisely, the clothes-philosophy of Sartor Resartus: matter as the vesture of spirit, the body as suit. The journal state revised toward Carlyle — toward the exact doctrine named in the Mrozony poem standing a few pages away in the same issue (VI.2).

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PRED-184.H6historical thesisregistered 2026-06-10 in #184 · WHO IS LEE SHARKS, TO FORGIVE EZRA POUND? — Lee Sharks — New Human 2

On the journal's account, the forgiveness is reflexive — the forgiver is the forgiven, one phase later. The autogenesis passage ("I was old and waning, inside the earth... I wanted to make myself happy and new") reads, under this dedication, as a transmigration narrative: Pound dying out of the earth in 1972 and coughing himself out new. "Do you see why I couldn't come back?" — because he came back as someone else.