How and Why — Summary

The speaker imagines a former life as a fish, eyes wide and gulping meaning as if it were food. That earlier self was hungry, curious, always taking in more—searching for understanding in a constant, almost instinctive way. The second half shifts into something much quieter. Now there is no more gulping, only waiting. The speaker feels empty, reduced to almost nothing: just a pinpoint of breath, a sliver of infinity. The mood is still and meditative, but touched with loneliness and awe. There is an exhaustion after so much searching, then a fragile openness. What remains when the striving stops is tiny and nearly invisible, yet it also feels connected to something vast. The poem moves from appetite and activity to patience and emptiness, leaving the reader suspended in that small, breath-like space between self and the infinite.