The Fish

Related poetry:

1. A Wreath To The Fish Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth, Flat on my drainboard, dead asleep, Its suit of mail proof only against the stream? What is it to live in a stream, To dwell forever in a tunnel of cold, Never to leave your shining birthsuit, Never to spend your inheritance of thin coins? And who […]...
2. The Lung Fish The Honorable Ardleigh Wyse Was every fisherman’s despair; He caught his fish on floating flies, In fact he caught them in the air, And wet-fly men good sports, perhaps He called “those chuck-and-chance-it chaps”. And then the Fates that sometimes play A joke on such as me and you Deported him up Queensland way To […]...
3. The Fish The first fish I ever caught Would not lie down Quiet in the pail But flailed and sucked At the burning Amazement of the air And died In the slow pouring off Of rainbows. Later I opened his body and separated The flesh from the bones And ate him. Now the sea Is in me: […]...
4. The Fish I caught a tremendous fish And held him beside the boat Half out of water, with my hook Fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, Battered and venerable And homely. Here and there His brown skin hung in strips Like ancient wallpaper, […]...
5. Fish Crier I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a Voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble In January. He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing A joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing. His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, Terribly glad that God […]...
6. Our biggest fish When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke, I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like; And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I’d caught! And, oh, the indignation and the valor I’d […]...
7. Counting Sheep A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He Wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture For them. They are like grains of rice. He wonders if it is possible to shrink something Out of existence. He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess, If they have any sense of […]...
8. Flying Fish I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself… and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel. I leaned so… and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now… and then under the […]...
9. The Farewell Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings Where the noisome insect stings Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air; Gone, […]...
10. The Goose Fish On the long shore, lit by the moon To show them properly alone, Two lovers suddenly embraced So that their shadows were as one. The ordinary night was graced For them by the swift tide of blood That silently they took at flood, And for a little time they prized Themselves emparadised. Then, as if […]...
11. The Pobble Who Has No Toes The Pobble who has no toes Had once as many as we; When they said “Some day you may lose them all;” He replied “Fish, fiddle-de-dee!” And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink Lavender water tinged with pink, For she said “The World in general knows There’s nothing so good for a Pobble’s toes!” The […]...
12. Morning Poem #40 pink around a Circle of pink Around a shimmer Of found reason Pink around a Glimmering white Shaked around A sound blue Somehow in the Touch of green Looped inside Loops abound A bound ribbon A hope bow bows In a rare season...
13. Gentlemen lift the sea on a deformed request in a train lavatory Gentlemen lift the sea Be all of you the modern Muscular mountains Who with a scoop of biceptual crags Swoop down for an armful of ocean Leavening the dreadful pressures On the valleys of lyonnesse Gentlemen rape air with water Let the submarine nose round the moon […]...
14. Crab When I eat crab, slide the rosy Rubbery claw across my tongue I think of my mother. She’d drive down To the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a Huge car, she’d ask the crab-man to Crack it for her. She’d stand and wait as the Pliers broke those chalky homes, wild- Red and […]...
15. The Fish In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o’ the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides. Those silent waters weave for […]...
16. Seed From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf, And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence, And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life. Now the lilies open, and the rose Released by summer from the harmless graves That, centuries deep, are in the air we breathe, And in our earth, […]...
17. Gannets I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And the fish Are nowhere to be seen, They fall, they explode into the water Like white gloves, Then they vanish, Then […]...
18. An Aquarium Streaks of green and yellow iridescence, Silver shiftings, Rings veering out of rings, Silver gold Grey-green opaqueness sliding down, With sharp white bubbles Shooting and dancing, Flinging quickly outward. Nosing the bubbles, Swallowing them, Fish. Blue shadows against silver-saffron water, The light rippling over them In steel-bright tremors. Outspread translucent fins Flute, fold, and relapse; […]...
19. The watchers against their beliefs a blue spot came slowly Out of the green Nobody expected such a thing to occur On a thursday The watchers switched over from their electronic Eye to their notes The evidence undeniably placed thursday as the day Of the pink circle They recorded having seen another pink circle In a strange […]...
20. To a Fish You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced, And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste; And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be, Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry, Legless, unloving, infamously chaste: O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring […]...
21. Bear In There There’s a Polar Bear In our Frigidaire He likes it ’cause it’s cold in there. With his seat in the meat And his face in the fish And his big hairy paws In the buttery dish, He’s nibbling the noodles, He’s munching the rice, He’s slurping the soda, He’s licking the ice. And he lets […]...
22. The Fish Although you hide in the ebb and flow Of the pale tide when the moon has set, The people of coming days will know About the casting out of my net, And how you have leaped times out of mind Over the little silver cords, And think that you were hard and unkind, And blame […]...
23. Yes, the Fish Music A trout-colored wind blows Through my eyes, through my fingers, And I remember how the trout Used to hide from the dinosaurs When they came to drink at the river. The trout hid in subways, castles, And automobiles. They waited patiently for the dinosaurs to go away....
24. Night: San Francisco Rain drenches the patio stones. All night was spent waiting For an earthquake, and instead Water stains sand with its pink foam. Yesterday’s steps fill in with gray crabs. Baritone of a fog horn. A misty light Warns tankers, which block the green After-sunset flash. My lover’s voice calls To others in his restless sleep. […]...
25. A Fish Answers Amazing monster! that, for aught I know, With the first sight of thee didst make our race For ever stare! O flat and shocking face, Grimly divided from the breast below! Thou that on dry land horribly dost go With a split body and most ridiculous pace, Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace, Long-useless-finned, […]...
26. Turtle Now I see it It nudges with its bulldog head The slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble; And now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal Who is leading her soft children From one side of the pond to the other; she keeps Close to the edge And they […]...
27. Tin Fish The ships destroy us above And ensnare us beneath. We arise, we lie down, and we In the belly of Death. The ships have a thousand eyes To mark where we come. . . But the mirth of a seaport dies When our blow gets home....
28. High Windows When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, […]...
29. Climbing The Chagrin River We enter The green river, Heron harbor, Mud-basin lined With snagheaps, where turtles Sun themselves we push Through the falling Silky weight Striped warm and cold Bounding down Through the black flanks Of wet rocks we wade Under hemlock And white pine climb Stone steps into The timeless castles Of emerald eddies, Swirls, channels Cold […]...
30. Good Friday 2001, Riding North Yellow makes a play for green among The rows of some poor farmer’s field outside The Memphis city limits’ northern edge. A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown, Not knowing it entices into tears This woman never once disposed to travel The holiday before. My children squander Unleavened bread brought forth from […]...
31. The Steeple-Jack Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales To look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house On a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales On a fish. One by one in two’s and three’s, the seagulls […]...
32. Cuttings This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life? I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it The small waters seeping upward, The tight grains parting at […]...
33. A Note Left In Jimmy Leonard's Shack Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even if the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I […]...
34. Sandpiper The roaring alongside he takes for granted, And that every so often the world is bound to shake. He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake. The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet Of interrupting water comes and goes And glazes […]...
35. Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market Among the market greens, A bullet From the ocean Depths, A swimming Projectile, I saw you, Dead. All around you Were lettuces, Sea foam Of the earth, Carrots, Grapes, But Of the ocean Truth, Of the unknown, Of the Unfathomable Shadow, the Depths Of the sea, The abyss, Only you had survived, A pitch-black, varnished […]...
36. Irony An arid daylight shines along the beach Dried to a grey monotony of tone, And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach The skeletons of fishes, every bone Polished and stark, like traceries of stone, The joints and knuckles hardened each to each. […]...
37. The Past is the Present If external action is effete And rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class The teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said – and I think I repeat his exact words – “Hebrew poetry is prose With a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords The occasion and […]...
38. GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS They have my own fear of the dark, Tupapau – spirits of the dead they call it; Returning late with oil I found fear of it Had spread my vabine naked on the bed. Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’ Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way She is afraid; I marvel […]...
39. Leonora They have made for Leonora this low dwelling in the ground, And with cedar they have woven the four walls round. Like a little dryad hiding she’ll be wrapped all in green, Better kept and longer valued than by ways that would have been. They will come with many roses in the early afternoon, They […]...
40. In Spain Tagus, farewell! that westward with thy streams Turns up the grains of gold already tried With spur and sail, for I go to seek the Thames Gainward the sun that shewth her wealthy pride, And to the town which Brutus sought by dreams, Like bended moon doth lend her lusty side. My king, my country, […]...