"Marriage" XVI (by David Harsent)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

David Harsent, Selected Poems 1969-2005 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2008 International Shortlist).

1I perch on a ‘Bauhaus-style’ chrome and raffia

2stool as you drop your knife and pause to consider

3this fish and its fistula,

4this fish with its deep deformity, its head like a cosh,

5its raw flank and blood-brown eyes,

6its lips of lopsided blubber,

7this fish we are having for supper.

8You laid out cold cash

9to have them deliver this fish, close-packed in ice,

10a glacier coelacanth preserved against all the odds,

11as if some throw of the dice, some coin

12turning a thousand years to come down heads,

13had brought to the marble slab in our kitchen

14of all kitchens this fish, sporting

15its jowly truncheon-lump of sorbo rubber

16and the great wet ulcer opening beneath its backbone.

17As you start again, flensing good from bad, let you spill

18a viscous flub of gut that slips

19from your wrist to the marble, where it spells

20out the hierogram most often linked

21with the once in a lifetime, miraculous

22descent of the goddess, her gills

23crisp enough to cut as you trade kiss for kiss.

24Flesh of her flesh. I’ll eat it if you will.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011