Poems (Marianne Moore)/THE FISH
For works with similar titles, see The Fish.
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.