With great power, comes great ... argh! You're not going to listen anyways!
0 Replies
George
3
Mon 26 Aug, 2013 01:13 pm
@panzade,
I was helping my son move a mattress and box spring this weekend.
At his flat he had a copy of Billy Collin's Ballistics.
I read some of the poems and came across this:
The Fish
by Billy Collins
As soon as the elderly waiter
placed before me the fish I had ordered,
it began to stare up at me
with its one flat, iridescent eye.
I feel sorry for you., it seemed to say,
eating alone in this awful restaurant
bathed in such unkindly light
and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily.
And I feel sorry for you, too—
yanked from the sea and now lying dead
next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh—
I said back to the fish as I raised my fork.
And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city
with its rivers and lighted bridges
was graced not only with chilled wine
and lemon slices but with compassion and sorrow
even after the waiter removed my plate
with the head of the fish still staring
and the barrel vault of its delicate bones
terribly exposed, save for a shroud of parsley.
