This water
This cool serrated water
Feels like scales of fish on me.
I stand on the boat roof.
The air feels cool and pure
Like virgin water
For ever secure in the sunless deep.
I stand firm and fearless,
An Adam fish with steady fins,
Beyond net or hook,
In the fisherman's dreams.
Fishgirl, hook me up
With your heart
And take home your precious kill.
3 comments:
I was watching the amazing metamorphosis of the ‘I’ in ‘Scales of Water’; an ‘I’ who experiences a transformation at a particular moment in his life until his poetic trance recedes away to return him to the everyday world of human beings. We encounter the first ‘I’ in line 4, a normal human being standing on the boat roof. The second ‘I’ in line 8 is a metaphorical ‘Adam fish’ who exists in ‘fisherman’s dreams’. We see a transition from the concrete human being to a dreamy figure. This ‘I’ transforms itself into a more objective ‘me’ in line 12, a complete fish, hooked up by the ‘fishgirl’. This transformation is supported by the visual and tactile images of the poem. As for the first ‘I’, the water is ‘cool’ and ‘serrated’ and feels like ‘scales of fish’, producing an effect of the world as we feel it. Later on, the description turns rather abstract and the environment gets an imaginary lightness in contrast to the concrete world.
Now let’s turn to other things; first, let’s examine how the idea of ‘virgin water’ is supported by the details. The adjective ‘virgin’ is defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary as something ‘in its original pure or natural condition and not changed, touched or spoiled.’ The poet says the ‘virgin water’ is like ‘pure’ air and “for ever ‘secure’ in the sunless deep.” The sun, an intruder with its rays, may violate the calmness and serenity of the water. But being ‘sunless’, the ‘virgin water’ secures its inviolability.
Consider the following lines:
I stand firm and fearless,
An Adam fish with steady fins,
Beyond net or hook,
In the fisherman's dreams.
How does the dreamy ‘Adam fish’ look like? For me, it’s extremely beautiful and handsome. The word ‘handsome’, frequently used to talk about male-beauty, isn’t an inappropriate adjective here; I’ll tell you why. Let’s not forget the masculine tone in the word ‘Adam’ which has been suggested beforehand in the line ‘I stand firm and fearless’ where almost every syllable is stressed to evoke masculine power. Secondly, if we consider words like ‘stand’, ‘firm’ and ‘fearless’ with all their sexual implications, we’ll smell strong masculinity. The next line, ‘An Adam fish with steady fins’ is a perfect iambic tetrameter which gives an impression of perfectly harmonious masculine beauty as was epitomized in the ‘David” of Michelangelo.
In the last stanza, however, the poem takes a surprising shift. The poet asks the fishgirl to hook him up and take him in her possession. This aspiration of happily surrendering the male-self to the fishgirl, this ultimate masochism, is a stark contrast to the traditional view of masculinity.
Shourabh
You make me read the poem with new surprises. The speaker turned fish turned penetrator of virginity takes the virginity of liquescent air before surrendering to the virginity of water. The speaker and the virgin water become male and female, masculine and feminine in turn. Both become hermaphroditic beings by the sheer act of imagination. By the same token the hierarchy of power and submission levels out, a result feminists have been vociferously and even querelously but ineffectually trying to achieve for ages. Your reading is simply amazing,and your critical idiom almost unimprovable.
'This water
This cool serrated water' is felt like scales of fish.Later the water becomes abstract.Isn't so?
Then it becomes like 'virgin water'.Why?May be for abstractness.Why it seems to be 'virgin'?May be-the water is unreachable or untouched.Being on the rooftop of the boat the writer is thinking of the sunless deep water.He is thinking himself an Adam fish.It must be a sign of perfectness.May be the writer is dreaming like the russian writer Alexandar Belaev.In a science fiction,the protagonist-a very handsome guy could perform as a man ,as well as a fish also.He knew many mistery of the deep sea.I was fond of this excellent science fiction by Alexandar.
To me,quest for the unknown and emotion are intermingled in this poem.I don't know whether it is such-or not.But to me,it seems to be.
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