The Fishwife's Tale

For me, the possibility of a new poem is more often suggested by a word, or words, rather than experience or the world. Words are generated by other words, books by other books, poems by other poems. It is for others to translate the world into literature. Perhaps for me the world is words, which is probably not how it should be. However, seeing the word 'fishwife' this week immediately set off that rare alarm call that there was the next poem.
I'm not convinced about the last line. 'Herbs' are a vestige of the scruffy notes I made as I tried to find a way in, where they were going to be a rhyme for 'verbs' once the parallel between language and fish recipes had been arrived at. It can stay like that and go into the 'uncollected poems' folder for later amendment if necessary. It takes a while to look back on these things and decide if it's really worthwhile.

The Fishwife’s Tale

Beyond the Gentility Principle

I say it was fresh yesterday and sell

them for what I can get, their shine tarnished,

their bored eyes staring back at me without

reproach but their perfume becomes my own.

The Market Square goes home with me, hanging

about me like a curse, while my turbot

and halibut that servants had been sent to fetch

are laid on china plates for those whose taste

in poetry’s not likely to mean mine.

I know what they say about me in posh

houses with chandeliers and dogs who know

their pedigree. My language doesn’t show

up in their delicate capriccios

being, for the love of God, in rude health

and vigorous. My nouns are (like life) short

and brutish and my verbs intransitive

and as unpalatable as my fish

would be without the lemon or parsley

or carefully prepared sauce made from herbs.