now
lying in front of me
dead.
The speaker expresses sadness and disbelief over the death of the fish in muted ways. Here, we know that he is distressed by it because of the way he delays saying the word "dead," waiting until the final line of the poem's opening stanza. This delay builds suspense, making the revelation of the word "dead" feel shocking, but it also lets us know that the speaker is processing this reality slowly and perhaps reluctantly. The shortness of the lines here further illustrates his slow coming-to-terms: he first deals with temporal reality with the word "now," then orients himself in space relative to the fish, and then, finally, reaches the conclusion that the fish is dead.
Surrounded
by the earth's green froth
—these lettuces,
bunches of carrots—
only you
lived through
the sea's truth...
One of the poem's driving tensions is the contrast between the earth and the sea. The speaker sees the earth, where the tuna is now, as understandable and mundane in contrast to the mysterious sea. Here, we see the initiation of that juxtaposition: the speaker positions the tuna as a conduit to the sea, in contrast to his current surroundings on land. The deep, long "ou" sounds in "you," "through," and "truth" lend a gravity and sonic fluidity to descriptions of undersea life, deepening that contrast. However, even on land, the fish lies in a "froth"—a marine metaphor that subtly connects him to his former habitat even while his circumstances are unrecognizable.
in the coursing
of
the
underwater
dark,
like a grieving arrow,
sea-javelin, a nerveless
oiled harpoon.
This section of the poem emphasizes the living tuna's speed, grace, and directness when in its natural habitat. One way in which it conveys these attributes is through extremely short, enjambed lines. The one-word lines here create a long, trailing appearance on the page, mimicking the tuna's speedy course through the water. The weaponry metaphors stacked at the end of the stanza similarly emphasize speed: javelins, harpoons, and arrows are all thin, streamlined, and fast. Collectively, these various means of describing speed and directness contrast with the loose, shapeless "underwater dark," creating a dramatic, imagistic mix of speeds, sizes, and movement patterns.
