Читать книгу Aquarium - Harold Acton - Страница 5

Table of Contents

IF you would view, buy tickets at the door.

Your brain for lucre please! the fishes here

Require some effort on your part, no more,

For comprehension; then the water’s clear

And you will see, dimpling in hyaline

Fish, oval, strange, glitter as rubied wine

In crystal goblets; fish with spotted gills,

Great flower-fish like open daffodils,

Pale fish that float with mellow, morbid eyes,

Dark fish that feed on wings of dragon flies,

Fish fulvid and fugacious, hovering

Amongst the silver cress with carmine wing,

And fish with small reticulated scales

Floundering mazed, with iridescent tails

Diaphanously quivering …

Mad, necrophilic urchins cleft to trees

Of coral, with a sting as keen as bees

When they would kiss you; fish electrical

And fish with poniards, fierce, inimical,

Red fish that bark like mastiffs at the moon,

Blue limpets, purple jellies, fish that croon

Mauve, melancholy melodies, and fish

To suit your mood, good reader, as you wish!