They give us 60 years and then they’ll

be no more fish. The sea itself emptied of its little wills.

The Oceanic Symphony completely naked of notes and key.

Poseidon will have to sing himself to sleep

and even the waves against the shore

will sound hollow and punk.

If you think of the abyss as an orchard

the water trees are bare in the fields of the sea.

Without her half-shell Venus is aborted

and we will never know beauty again.

Without her fish there will be no rapture of the deep

and in the oceans there will be no further dreaming.

We should not wake the sleepwalking sea

who first learned the Tale of Paradise,

imagination’s springs and destiny’s wells.

Each of us will learn the new venom

by getting bitten. The barren waters

without their lexicon. No shadows drift

or dart among the kelp and without these changes

there can be no syntax or anything said at all.

It’s a good thing god is dead.

I can’t see him forgiving us for this.

— Joseph Dionne