The Drunken Fisherman

Wallowing in this bloody sty,

I cast for fish that pleased my eye

(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends

No pots of gold to weight its ends);

Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout

Rose to my bait.  They flopped about

My canvas creel until the moth

Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;

A handkerchief to wave away

The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm

Pouching a bottle in one arm;

A whiskey bottle full of worms;

And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms

To mete the worm whose molten rage

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 obscene

Catches kept his conscience clean.

Children, the raging memory drools

Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls

Its bloody waters into holes;

A grain of sand inside my shoe

Mimics the moon that might undo

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 hook

Out of this dynamited brook?

The Fisher's sons must cast about

When shallow waters peter out.

I will catch Christ with a greased worm,

And when the Prince of Darkness stalks

My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . .

On water the Man-Fisher walks.