Читать книгу Kindest Regards - Ted Kooser - Страница 39

Cleaning a Bass

She put it on the chopping block

and it flopped a little, the red rickrack

of its sharp gills sawing the evening air

into lengths, its yellow eyes like glass,

like the eyes of a long-forgotten doll

in the light of an attic. “They feel no pain,”

she told me, setting the fish upright,

and with a chunk of stovewood

she drove an ice pick through its skull

and into the block. The big fish curled

on its pin like a silver pennant

and then relaxed, but I could see life

in those eyes, which stared at the darkening

world of the air with a terrible wonder.

“It’s true,” she said, looking over at me

through the gathering shadows, “they feel no pain,”

and she took her Swedish filleting knife

with its beautiful blade that leaped and flashed

like a fish itself, and with one stroke

laid the bass bare to its shivering spine.