Jemma Borg
A short treatise on a squid
A short treatise on a squid
Overhead, yes, the shark hangs
like a Renaissance saint, in whose eyes time
falls like a sediment, and no doubt
the machinations of a moray eel's jaws
are more dangerous than teeth in a glass
and it is not grief that makes the upward,
filling mass of little bells - the jellyfish -
drop again as a heart does into sorrow,
but it's in the basement's deep and damp Atlantic,
among the transparent skins of fish
and the skeletons worn with a monstrous clarity,
that the greatest exaggeration is made
as Vampyroteuthis infernalis heaves into view.
That name. It reminds me of Prudentius
who said the corruption of language
is at the root of sin. Once Satan's tongue was split,
object and name slid off one another
like function and form in a tumour
or lovers making and remaking their union,
but still remaining alone. What crosses
the divide is not itself, but what has found
itself in another: an ecstasy of mind
where like is like is like... Dear metaphor
- read 'lover' - we invented heaven,
imagining sky as a fish might the land:
alien, beautiful on our tongue.
