Summary
The speaker begins the poem by introducing a setting: a vegetable market. Lying among the vegetables for sale is a fish, which once swam through the ocean like a missile but is now dead in front of the speaker. Though now lying among vegetables, the products of the ground and the earth, the fish once swam through the sea. The speaker, addressing the fish, imagines that it was well-acquainted with the unknown abyss of the ocean. The fish, shining and black, was a lone witness to something so dark and inaccessible that the speaker and other humans have no knowledge of it.
Analysis
For many readers, the most immediately striking element of these early lines will have little to do with their content. Rather, it is the appearance of the poem on the page that is notable. Neruda uses extremely short lines and a great deal of enjambment. As a result, this relatively short poem (in terms of its number of words) is lengthened, stretching out over an enormous amount of visual space. This dramatic choice has several important effects. In a sense, these short lines slow the poem down: they cause us to pause at every one of the many, many line breaks. This slowness mimics the speaker's own slow, painful thought process. The speaker is evidently alarmed and saddened by the sight of the dead fish. In fact, he seems to feel a degree of disbelief. With the frequent pauses created by line breaks, Neruda takes us into his speaker's stunned, grasping thoughts. He even creates the impression that the speaker is in a degree of denial. For instance, by leaving the word "dead" in its own line, at the very end of the poem's first stanza, Neruda suggests that the speaker is reluctant to utter the word.
In fact, one of the strangest parts of the poem is the speaker's emotional reaction to the animal. On the one hand, their interaction is a dialogue of sorts. He addresses the fish, thinks about the fish's life, and has an intense, almost alchemical series of epiphanies and musings catalyzed by the sight of the animal. On the other hand, the tuna is dead, completely unaware of the speaker. One way to understand this dynamic is as a kind of redemption for the tuna. By speaking to and caring about it, the speaker lends it an afterlife, making it relevant even after it has died and been disregarded by nearly everyone else. A darker interpretation may be that the speaker, by employing the unconsenting tuna in his own mental processes and addressing a being who cannot respond, merely takes advantage of its powerlessness, projecting his own feelings and assumptions onto it.
In any case, the short lines mentioned earlier serve a second major function. In addition to slowing down the reader and imitating the speaker's slow thought process, they also, paradoxically, suggest the speed and efficiency of the fish. Their snaking, cascading path on the page acts as a map of sorts, helping us picture the tuna's trajectory through the ocean. The speed of the living fish contrasts with the heavy stillness of the dead one. But it also contrasts, interestingly, with the stillness of the ocean. Neruda portrays the ocean as a dark, huge abyss expertly navigated by the powerful tuna. These juxtapositions of speed, size, and brightness are driving sensory tensions in the poem, adding immense drama to an otherwise humdrum story.
