18 FEBRUARY 1949, Page 15

SONNET OF FISH

Bright drips the morning froin its trophied nets Looped in a sky flickering with fish and wing ; Cobbles like salmon crowd up the waterfalling Alleys where life dies thrashing as the sea forgets, True widow, what she has lost ; and, ravished, lets The knuckledustered sun shake bullying A fist of glory over her. Every living thing, Even the sly night, gives up its lunar secrets.

And I with pilchards cold in my pocket make A red-eyed way to the bed. But in my blood Crying I hear, still, the leap of the silver diver Caught in four cords after his fatal strake : And then, the immense immanence not understood, Death, in a dark, in a deep. in a dream, for ever.

GEORGE BARKER.