Mark Doty–poet of the depths of surfaces
A Display of Mackerel
They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity
.
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales’
radiant sections
.
like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery
.
prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,
.
think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in any way
.
distinguished from the other
–nothing about them
of individuality. Instead
.
they’re all exact expressions
of the one soul,
each a perfect fulfilment
.
of heaven’s template,
mackerel essence. As if,
after a lifetime arriving
.
at this enameling, the jeweler’s
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate
.
in its oily fabulation
as the one before
Suppose we could iridesce,
.
like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer–would you want
.
to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost? They’d prefer,
.
plainly, to be flashing participants,
multitudinous. Even now
the seem to be bolting
.
forward, heedless of stasis.
They don’t care they’re dead
and nearly frozen,
.
just as, presumably,
they didn’t care that they were living:
all, all for all,
.
the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,
.
or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming.
–From “Atlantis”, published in 1995
Tags: Books and Reading, iridescence, mackerel, Mark Doty, poetry
Bob
April 24th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Hooray for Mark Doty (a Houstonian?) and for you, for posting this poem.