Poetry can start with a special kind of ignorance. We know just enough to be dangerous, as they say, enough to have triggering ideas and images but not so much as to limit the free play of the imagination.
That was the case when I wrote “The Pale Fish in Limestone Caves.” I’d been thinking about cave fish, that peculiar, fascinating life they lead, but I avoided studying up on the subject. I felt something on the horizon which had little to do, of course, with fish or caves or limestone. Too many facts would only blind the little poem to what it needed to see.
—
The Pale Fish in Limestone Caves
Keep mainly to themselves, leading
The quiet life down there,
Free from distraction.
Full-grown, they are slightly larger
Than your little finger and hang
Silent in the pools, their icy fins
Barely feathering the clear water polished
Through so many miles of pure stone
It is almost not water.
And they have no stars, no vague seasons,
No light flooding the amazed chambers
Clustered with stalactites, rotting jewelry,
Roses, molars, staircases of wrinkled ivory
And sugar-pink, two-ton wedding cakes
Collapsing with a flurry of wings and centaurs
To disturb them so they are blind.
Their eyes rest like moist pearls
In their milky faces, and each creature
Will regard the other as a secret, gently,
As they reproduce with a pale shuddering
Their perfect lives.
From The Glass Children
