Canto XLV Sin Quotes

Well he ain't exactly being subtle here. Pound calls usura a sin against nature, claiming that it turns our bread into stale rags. He's probably talking about the Christian symbol of the bread of life, meaning the stuff that our souls need to feed on in order to be healthy. But our spiritual bread of life is turned to rags by usura, and so all of us feel a quiet despair about the future, whether we know it or not.

Again, Pound comes at us full bore with Biblical words like "dwelling" to talk about what people lose when they start engaging in moneylending and speculation. According to Pound, people somehow lose the ability to draw clear boundary lines and build their houses. It's not quite clear how this is the case, but Pound might mean it symbolically to suggest that no one can have a clear sense of "home" in a world constantly turned upside-down by money and numbers.

Many of us have probably never read the word "murrain" before. But it's basically just a synonym for "plague" or "sickness." Saying that usury is a sickness allows Pound to connect the practice of usury with having a soul that isn't healthy.