Fisch

Fisch

AcrylLeinwand über Draht

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
[…]

He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
[…] Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

[…]
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
[…]

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—-until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

And I let the fish go.

(Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish)