Poem by Marianne Moore

The Fish

    wade
    through black jade.
      Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one
        keeps
        adjusting the ash heaps;
      opening and shutting itself like

    an
    injured fan.
      The barnacles which encrust the
        side
        of the wave, cannot hide
      there for the submerged shafts of the

    sun,
    split like spun
      glass, move themselves with spotlike swift-
        ness
        into the crevices—
      in and out, illuminating

    the
    turquoise sea
      of bodies. The water drives a
        wedge
        of iron through the iron edge
      of the cliff, whereupon the stars,

    pink
    rice grains, ink
      bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like
        green
        lilies and submarine
      toadstools, slide each on the other.

    All
    external
      marks of abuse are present on
        this
        defiant edifice—
      all the physical features of

    ac-
    cident—lack
      of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns
        and
        hatchet strokes, these things stand
      out on it; the chasm side is

    dead.
    Repeated
      evidence has proved that it can
        live
        on what cannot revive
      its youth. The sea grows old in it.

1. Roses Only
2. In This Age of Hard Trying Nonchalance Is Good, and
3. To William Butler Yeats on Tagore
4. Those Various Scalpels
5. Black Earth

Elizabeth Bishop The Fish ("I caught a tremendous fish")

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