The Goose Fish Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEEFF FFFFFFFFF GGHGHFFBB IJKDKLLFF MMNMNOPQQ| On the long shore lit by the moon | A |
| To show them properly alone | B |
| Two lovers suddenly embraced | C |
| So that their shadows were as one | D |
| The ordinary night was graced | C |
| For them by the swift tide of blood | E |
| That silently they took at flood | E |
| And for a little time they prized | F |
| Themselves emparadised | F |
| - | |
| Then as if shaken by stage fright | F |
| Beneath the hard moon's bony light | F |
| They stood together on the sand | F |
| Embarrassed in each other's sight | F |
| But still conspiring hand in hand | F |
| Until they saw there underfoot | F |
| As though the world had found them out | F |
| The goose fish turning up though dead | F |
| His hugely grinning head | F |
| - | |
| There in the china light he lay | G |
| Most ancient and corrupt and grey | G |
| They hesitated at his smile | H |
| Wondering what it seemed to say | G |
| To lovers who a little while | H |
| Before had thought to understand | F |
| By violence upon the sand | F |
| The only way that could be known | B |
| To make a world their own | B |
| - | |
| It was a wide and moony grin | I |
| Together peaceful and obscene | J |
| They knew not what he would express | K |
| So finished a comedian | D |
| He might mean failure or success | K |
| But took it for an emblem of | L |
| Their sudden new and guilty love | L |
| To be observed by when they kissed | F |
| That rigid optimist | F |
| - | |
| So he became their patriarch | M |
| Dreadfully mild in the half dark | M |
| His throat that the sand seemed to choke | N |
| His picket teeth these left their mark | M |
| But never did explain the joke | N |
| That so amused him lying there | O |
| While the moon went down to disappear | P |
| Along the still and tilted track | Q |
| That bears the zodiac | Q |
Howard Nemerov
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