Goldfish

They are the angels of that watery world,     With so much knowledge that they just aspire     To move themselves on golden fins,     Or fill their paradise with fire     By darting suddenly from end to end.     Glowing a thousand centuries behind     In pools half-recollected of the mind,     Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see     Beyond those curtains of Eternity.     When twilight flows into the room     And air becomes like water, you can feel     Their movements growing larger in the gloom,     And you are led     Backward to where they live beyond the dead.     But in the morning, when the seven rays     Of London sunlight one by one incline,     They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips     Suck the light in, so they are caught and played     Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line.     *    *    *    *     Ghosts on a twilight floor,     Moving about behind their watery door,     Breathing and yet not breathing day and night,     They give the house some gleam of faint delight.