Fish

They are beyond me, are fishes.
I stand at the pale of my being
And look beyond, and see
Fish, in the outerwards,
As one stands on a bank and looks in.

I have waited with a long rod
And suddenly pulled a gold-and-greenish, lucent fish from below,
And had him fly lika a halo round my head,
Lunging in the line on the air.

Unhooked his gorping, water-horny mouth,
And seen his horror-tilted eye,
His red-gold, water-precious, mirror-flat, bright eye;
And felt him beat in my hand, with his mucuos, leaping life-throb.

And my heart accused itself,
Thinking: I am not the measure of creation.
This is beyond me, this fish.
His God stands outside my God.

And the gold-and-green pure lacquer-mucous comes off in my hand,
And the red-gold mirror-eye stares and dies,
And the water-suave contour dims.

But not before I have had to know
He was born in front of my sunrise,
Before my day.
He outstarts me.
And I, a many-fingered horror of daylight to him,
Have made him die.

Fishes,
With their gold-red eyes, and green-pure gleam, and under-gold,
And their pre-world loneliness,
And more than lovelessness,
And white flesh;
They move in other circles.

Outsiders.
Water wayfarers.