A fish's life isn't easy.
Look at me.
I cannot close my eyes
I cannot stop moving
I cannot help hearing
All that I never wanted to.
I do not sleep
I do not dream
All I know
That a few strokes ahead
I will kiss the cold reflection
of my own self.
Thank you, Lord, for this glass cage...
In this heat, I sweat profuse.
I splash water at my armpits
The nape of my neck
And shameless, over my genitals.
On the bed, in the nude
I fart and sigh, happy.
The dogs lie legs up in the air,
Too tired to smell the wind.
I choke at the chilled lemonade
Gurgling down my throat.
Out in the portico, a crow
Dips its beak and then jumps
Into the clay pan, splashing in the water.
I wish I were a fish,
Swishing my tail, chilling
With the mermaids.
I want to say that I've phoned you
a dozen times this week
and sometimes the dog has answered
and sometimes the parrot
and once
the imperturbable fish in their aquarium
revolved through my ear
like fossils of your tongue
(This is to be recited in those silences which come upon
bars when the juke box and the conversations stop at
the same time for no apparent reason.)
(This is to be recited in the laziness of Sunday afternoons
when yawns are buckets filling with sunlight.)
(This is to be recited late at night on a streetcorner as
the bus retreats into the distance, into the blurred
sound of old cities rusting under water.)
an hour
after summer equinox
breviaries
bell tone of vespers
two children swimming
among ten thousand salmon
teach the children
how to catch fish
with their hands
that
any trout
interested in taking chances
will kiss their fingers
that
in a summer solstice
bees land on their nose
went & going noise
create a swell in ground
audible
in walls surround us
mapping of words
heard thru water thru
sound
sounded to a state of going
: fish in water
presage movement a
passage
hole cut in wood
that fish in
birch shd look happy
that looking shd be seeing
as a fish is being
I was looking through a recipe book
trying to find out how to cook a fish.
I started to wonder...
what if a fish was looking up
a good recipe
on how to cook a man.
I left the kitchen
and my feet brought me to the sea.
I splashed into the world of fishes
and forgot to eat; I felt no hunger at all.
I caught crickets
at their singing —
then flung them
out far, to hear fish
rising to my gift.
And the rain came,
no one can remember when.
Here, with us,
in us,
no one knows how long it’s going to stay.
Making our nights starless,
Our days grey.
and us walking fish,
in this soggy space, which is rotting
everything.
The great blue heron, common on the Island
Is a refugee from dirty water,
Not liking pollutants in the cold soup
She fishes for nourishment and flavour.
Look at the way she stands, as jokers say
With just one foot at a time in the water,
Counting herself a delicate creature
Subject to chills, although I've not seen her
Shift her stance from one leg to another
To disturb perfection in her figure
Surreally drawn, as if with a few strokes.
The chatter and movement of other bird
Sorts are not for her. Still as space she looks
Between her toes for fish, and when she moves
The lightning is more sudden than the stroke
She makes, I guess. Or if dissatisfied
In a former life,
I was a fish,
eyes wide,
gulping
meaning.
Now I wait,
empty,
a pinpoint
of breath,
a sliver
of infinity.
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
I swayed upon the gaudy stern
The butt end of a steering oar,
And everywhere that I could turn
Men ran upon the shore.
And though I would have hushed the crowd
There was no mother's son but said,
'What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'
And fishes bubbling to the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath,
--It had such dignity of limb--
By the sweet name of Death.
Though I'd my finger on my lip,
What could I but take up the song?
And fish and crowd and gaudy ship
Cried out the whole night long,