Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Elizabeth Bishop. Reprinted from <\/em>Poems with the permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/em><\/p>\n
I caught a tremendous fish
\nand held him beside the boat
\nhalf out of water, with my hook
\nfast in a corner of his mouth.
\nHe didn’t fight.
\nHe hadn’t fought at all.
\nHe hung a grunting weight,
\nbattered and venerable
\nand homely. Here and there
\nhis brown skin hung in strips
\nlike ancient wallpaper,
\nand its pattern of darker brown
\nwas like wallpaper:
\nshapes like full-blown roses
\nstained and lost through age.
\nHe was speckled with barnacles,
\nfine rosettes of lime,
\nand infested
\nwith tiny white sea-lice,
\nand underneath two or three
\nrags of green weed hung down.
\nWhile his gills were breathing in
\nthe terrible oxygen
\n\u2014the frightening gills,
\nfresh and crisp with blood,
\nthat can cut so badly\u2014
\nI thought of the coarse white flesh
\npacked in like feathers,
\nthe big bones and the little bones,
\nthe dramatic reds and blacks
\nof his shiny entrails,
\nand the pink swim-bladder
\nlike a big peony.
\nI looked into his eyes
\nwhich were far larger than mine
\nbut shallower, and yellowed,
\nthe irises backed and packed
\nwith tarnished tinfoil
\nseen through the lenses
\nof old scratched isinglass.
\nThey shifted a little, but not
\nto return my stare.
\n\u2014It was more like the tipping
\nof an object toward the light.
\nI admired his sullen face,
\nthe mechanism of his jaw,
\nand then I saw
\nthat from his lower lip
\n\u2014if you could call it a lip\u2014
\ngrim, wet, and weaponlike,
\nhung five old pieces of fish-line,
\nor four and a wire leader
\nwith the swivel still attached,
\nwith all their five big hooks
\ngrown firmly in his mouth.
\nA green line, frayed at the end
\nwhere he broke it, two heavier lines,
\nand a fine black thread
\nstill crimped from the strain and snap
\nwhen it broke and he got away.
\nLike medals with their ribbons
\nfrayed and wavering,
\na five-haired beard of wisdom
\ntrailing from his aching jaw.
\nI stared and stared
\nand victory filled up
\nthe little rented boat,
\nfrom the pool of bilge
\nwhere oil had spread a rainbow
\naround the rusted engine
\nto the bailer rusted orange,
\nthe sun-cracked thwarts,
\nthe oarlocks on their strings,
\nthe gunnels\u2014until everything
\nwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
\nAnd I let the fish go.<\/p>\n
____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Elizabeth Bishop. Reprinted from <\/em>Poems with the permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/elizabethbishop-e1612758417284.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em>Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer (born 8 Feb 1911-died 6 Oct 1979). She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.<\/em> The technical brilliance and formal variety of Elizabeth Bishop’s work\u2014rife with precise and true-to-life images\u2014helped establish her as a major force in contemporary literature.<\/em><\/p>\n