I said to my heart, who are these?
And my heart couldn’t own them....
A slim young pike, with smart fins
And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike
Slouching along away below, half out of sight,
Like a lout on an obscure pavement....
Aha, there’s somebody in the know!
But watching closer
That motionless deadly motion,
That unnatural barrel body, that long ghoul nose, ...
I left off hailing him.
I had made a mistake, I didn’t know him,
This grey, monotonous soul in the water,
This intense individual in shadow,
Fish-alive.
I didn’t know his God,
I didn’t know his God.
Which is perhaps the last admission that life has to wring out of us.
I saw, dimly,
Once a big pike rush,
And small fish fly like splinters.
And I said to my heart, there are limits
To you, my heart;
And to the one God.
Fish are beyond me.
Other Gods
Beyond my range ... gods beyond my God ...
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.