Elizabeth Bishop: At the Fishhouses

Tonight S calls round and after a while we talk, as often, of books. She is interested in fiction and reviews it for the press, but she reads little poetry. I begin to talk about Elizabeth Bishop, about how I think she is a great poet and that this poem, below, is one of her greatest. Here it is.


Elizabeth Bishop
At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.


*


Why is it a great poem? Why is that my whole body freezes and shivers at the end, and why I am on the edge of tears that are nothing to do with sentiment?

First we have what seems a long introduction describing every part of a scene in great detail, not only through the eye, but the nose. The image of silver hits us in line 13 and stays with us, transforming everything after it, almost as if the fish the old man had been catching for years had become the shore. We are chilled down, everything is strange, even a little exotic, but the language is plain, almost blunt, using words like the helpless exclamation, 'beautiful', as if the poet were stepping out of the scene for a moment, finding herself wordless and breathless. It isn't just glitter though. There is blood, and rust, and the Lucky Strike, and business, and look, the old man too is covered in silver.

There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Then we see the tree trunks and the stones and the hint of a descent into the water.

...down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

And now, for the first time, we feel the shock of the water. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear... It is ominous and staring us in the face. It is like our death yet it is no more than nature. It just is. Something, at least, there is that is cold dark deep and absolutely clear. But then follows an apparently light comical interlude with the seal. The speaker seems to have, or is rather playing at having, established communication with it. There is a joke about total immersion. She sings a Baptist hymn to the seal who appears to listen then disappears into that cold dark deep absolute clarity with a sort of shrug /as if it were against his better judgment.

The words are still faintly comical but are on the verge of leaving the comic for something else. And then the choric line returns. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear...

She looks back at the firs waiting for Christmas. Human festivals and human hymns, the ceremonial world of the human imagination.

But then she swings round again to the water that she has seen over and over again:

...slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.

And something begins to open up, partly in her, partly in the world. And then comes the thought, the possibility of entering the sea, doing no more at first than dipping a hand in, and immediately the bones would ache, and the hand burns

as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

That dark grey flame unites ice and fire.Then she imagines its bitter taste. Tasting it comes the revelation that has been haunting the poem all this time, the sense of that this cold dark deep and absolutely clear thing has a meaning that is just out of reach:

...It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn...

It is knowledge of a sort, imagined knowledge, out of the cold hard mouth of the world, that mother whose breasts are of rock. But the sea is in permanent flow, flowing, drawn...

... and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

And there is the knowledge that has been at the tip of our burning tongue. It is historical knowledge, and since time passes and history is a product of time, it too flows. History is flown knowledge.

In great poetry knowledge flows out of the mixture of sensation, memory, thought and apprehension. It is historical knowledge. The old man, the seal, the hymns, the extraordinary otherworldliness of the ordinary tinged with silver, blood and rust and work is part of it.

Here is a place to start. A first poem against which others can be measured.