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
they 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.
Source of the text - Mark Doty, Atlantis. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995, pp. 14-15.
TJB: Resistance is futile. This image poem in exact
essayistic praise of utter conformity starts with similes and ends by
personifying dead fish.
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