Elizabeth Bishop
From "At the Fishhouses"
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals...
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water...
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.
In this section of the poem, Bishop is speaking of the sea and of the sea as a metaphor for knowledge.
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