Fish

That black fish from Acapulco

looked at me with round eyes

and went back to the transparency

of its ocean of aniline:

I saw its moustaches take leave of

some few drops of sea

that brightly shone, celestial.

And when it fell from my fishhook

returning to the half-open murmur

of stone and blue water

it had not in its ecstatic eyes

any recognition

of earth, nor of man.

I shook with laughter

at my failure and its face

and it slipped away to revive

without emotions, in the water.

Pablo Neruda