These faces in the crowd appeared ghostly,
Many petals on wet black branches.
This is a small poem by the American poet Pound, which is a pioneer of Imagism in just 26 words and is regarded as the originator of Imagist poetry.
The first sentence side rewrites "face". The author wandered in the crowded Paris metro station and saw beautiful faces flashing from time to time, which inspired his creation. In an instant, however, these faces became so strange that they were blurred, eclipsed, and glamorous. As the saying goes: People look at people like ghosts. "Ghostly" is the poet's intuition, cathartic to vent an emotion. Just as Mr. Lu Xun described in "Medicine" as "three threes and twos, ghosts wandering there" people are the direct reflection of real life in the author's heart.
The second sentence side rewrites "petals". The petals are brightly colored and beautiful, and are the aesthetic objects corresponding to the "face". In the first moment, the faces are beautiful and charming, and the poet feels the ephemeral natural beauty. In ancient China, there was a verse that "the peach blossoms on the face of the people are red". However, two modifiers are used before "petals". "Wet" is drenched by rain, giving people a heavy feeling; "black branches" are dull in color, forming a strong visual contrast with the petals, which is extremely depressing in people's hearts, revealing the poet's exhaustion and inner boredom of the spirit of bustling urban life.
Pound's poem is short and subtle, and it is worth savoring. The two images of "face" and "petal" overlap in an instant, thus constituting a small poem with infinite charm that has both abstract rational understanding and strong emotional color.
