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.
