The Hook
I
The students, lost in raucousness,
caught as by the elder Breughel’s eye,
we sit in the college store
over sandwiches and coffee, wondering.
She answers eagerly: the place was fine;
sometimes the winds grew very cold,
the snows so deep and wide she lost
sight of people. Yes, she was well
satisfied with her work, expected—
while the quarry’s owner was away—
to do another year of it.
II
She is hammering. I hear
the steady sound inside our dry,
noisy days. Sparks fly; the mind,
so taken, mighty for a moment,
becomes quarry and sculptor both,
something caught like love and war
in this golden mesh: and daring
caught that flings like sparks girls
and boys, flagrant cities prompt
to daring’s will, love and war
its burly seconds.
III
I see again three kids we passed,
three kids lounging at the edge
of a forsaken quarry like something
they had built; in its sleepy pool
they found the whiteness of their bodies,
the excitement like parian marble.
IV
Such the waters we find ourselves
in. We sit in the college store absorbed
in food and talk. Eagerness seizes us
like love that leaves its best sailors
in the mighty waves, love the word
for hook whose catching, and the struggle
there, is one great musical clash
of minds—each wave a passion and a mind—
a possessed, tumultuous monument
that would be free.
V
We strain forward
as to some fabulous story. Incandescence
springs from her, the hammer of remembrance
fresh, the young woman, bulky graceful body,
face shining, who sculptured all winter
alone near the source of her rock,
digging down into the difficult rock:
the young woman who lost a day once,
talked to her cat, and when the mirror
of her art became too clear, when dreaming
seemed too big for night alone, took long
walks back to people, back to speech,
and time:
the woman, who at last—
“I do not use live models”—sculptured fish—
“I remember long lonely holidays at shores
when the spray alone defined green shapes
approaching”—has just seen (her eyes
still gleam with the gleam of it,
blink like the making of many
a take) a great catch.
VI
April, we say,
is the time for fish, for reaching
in its sea-like waftings one
of earth’s original conclusions
like the leftover gill slits
the singing student told us about
in this very spot just two days ago . . .
we are in the middle of a great catch,
there collected as from her year-long
lonely rock, the thrashing, clean-
scaled, clear-lit shad in the net.
Copyright Credit: Theodore Weiss, “The Hook” from Selected Poems, published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Theodore Weiss. All rights reserved; reprinted with the permission of Northwestern University Press, www.nupress.northwestern.edu.
Source: Poetry (November 1949)