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DEAD
SERPENTINE
I
watch at the fisherboy’s shoulder.
He
fishes the Serpentine. Fishes
for
nothing. Nothing that I can
see.
By
the mid-afternoon his keepnet
is
empty. My interest has
grown lean.
Then
he catches a nine-finned green thing
and
lets it stand still in green nothing
as
if the keepnet too were nothing.
The
shore water is greasy. It
has
matchsticks
in it. Far out are the
sun-cups
and
bronzed people in boats. And
if those
bronzed
people in boats could row me out
I
would escape willingly. But
here
like
a mother-love silence before it rains
death
means little to the fisherboy.
The
skin of the shore flakes off and soaks.
The
boy is the fish, the fish is dead,
a
green banana, a submerged thumb.
He
has fallen asleep under the green
like
an old man. Tenderness of
neck
turns
to the tender sun. His dead
hair
has
clung to his chin. I am the
boy.
I
too can drown in green nothing.
Alan
Marshfield
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