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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SEA BUTTERFLIES, by DON BLANDING First Line: Gay little fishes with painted scales Last Line: Long may you wave your chiffon tails. | |||
Gay little fishes with painted scales, Gossamer fins and chiffon tails, Spattered with jewel dust, stained with dyes, Gems of jade and jet for eyes. Striped with orange and smeared with blue, Dipped in the rainbow's every hue. Little ones, yellow as buttercups, Big ones, ugly as gutter-pups, Fat ones, bloated and marked like toads, Squatted by submarine forest roads. Fishes gilded with guinea-gold, Shaped like mythical beasts of old, Some are enamelled like cloisonne, Lacquered and penciled with colors gay. 'Broidered and traced like a Persian shawl. Fishes that swim and fishes that crawl, Splotched and daubed in a cubist scheme, Some are born of a mad man's dream. Fishes with whiskers and fishes with horns Just like the fabulous unicorn's. Colors that burn like a funeral pyre, Colors as pale as a moonstone's fire, Ochre and amethyst, ultramarine, Amber, umber and macaw green, Fragments of fancy, living a day, Going their curious deep-sea way. Gay little fishes with painted scales Long may you wave your chiffon tails. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: REV. LEMUEL WILEY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE FOUNTAIN (1) by SARA TEASDALE POLWART ON THE GREEN by ALLAN RAMSAY OLD MOTHERS by CHARLES SARSFIELD ROSS THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES by FRANCOIS VILLON STANZAS ADDRESSED TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY by BERNARD BARTON THE GOLDEN ODES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA: IMR EL KAIS by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |
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