The Drunken Fisherman

Wallowing in this bloody sty,

I cast for fish that pleased my eye(Truly Jehovah's bow

No pots of gold to weight its ends);

Only the blood-mouthed rainbow

Rose to my bait.  They flopped

My canvas creel until the

Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;

A handkerchief to wave

The gnats; a couch unstuffed with

Pouching a bottle in one arm;

A whiskey bottle full of worms;

And bedroom slacks: are these fit

To mete the worm whose molten

Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot—O wind blow cold,

O wind blow hot,

Let suns stay in or suns step out:

Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout—The fisher's fluent and

Catches kept his conscience clean.

Children, the raging memory

Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing,

Its bloody waters into holes;

A grain of sand inside my

Mimics the moon that might

Man and Creation too; remorse,

Stinking, has puddled up its source;

Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.

This is the pot-hole of old age.

Is there no way to cast my

Out of this dynamited brook?

The Fisher's sons must cast

When shallow waters peter out.

I will catch Christ with a greased worm,

And when the Prince of Darkness

My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . .

On water the Man-Fisher walks.