Still we send the trawlers out, although no one alive
\nhas heard the song, and no one dead will tell.<\/p>\n
Boat after boat hauls back, and captains hold
\ntheir silent ground on decks of gasping contraband<\/p>\n
to listen for a note, a tentative first \u2018O\u2019
\namong the mottled greens, the sand-brown, lobster blue.<\/p>\n
So with fathometers we scan the north Atlantic
\nin the hope of anthems welled-up in the liver<\/p>\n
of this loose bag of fish, that begs to be in batter,
\nfillet it as if to find the staves and dots are written through.<\/p>\n
Around the world tonight, these Arctic steels are fried
\nand served in last night\u2019s newspapers<\/p>\n
and even those who do not know the urban myth
\nwill hesitate a moment, wood-fork poised,<\/p>\n
as sirens stop, a tram freewheels, car alarms hold back
\nmid-flash before the prongs go in.<\/p>\n
A silent grace, this superstitious pause, which goes
\nunquestioned, as if from these locked maws<\/p>\n
a note may rise, the one we need to hear,
\nthe sound of seas retreating, song that summoned<\/p>\n
life from souped-up slime to all of this,
\nin truth, its maker\u2019s voice, ventriloquising<\/p>\n
through a dead cod on your plate,
\nthe beauty of its timbre as dark, opaque and full<\/p>\n
as this fish-eye, as fathomless, and yet within a day
\nso misremembered that its one-chance listener<\/p>\n
is cast out under city lights, thrown out of bar after bar,
\ndriven to despair by that half-forgotten song,<\/p>\n
hanging out in fish-and-chip shops, shushing customers,
\nhis ear pressed to the hot, lit glass.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mancunia<\/em> at night looks like embers from above, now stadiums like unblinking eyes, the bass clef curves of cul de sacs now you can pick out individual cars, nags\u2019 heads black poplars\u2019 ragged tops, roof tiles, kerbstones, face-to-face, down and under, slower, denser <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Deliver us from blood, O God, We are done with its showy scarlet we are struck. Give us instead honey, our words of hope full-weighed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cod with the Voice of a Cantor Still we send the trawlers out, although no one alive has heard the song, and no one dead will tell. Boat after boat hauls back, and captains hold their silent ground on decks of gasping contraband to listen for a note, a tentative first \u2018O\u2019 among the mottled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[338,339],"tags":[342],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nbut hold the dive and it reassembles, cools,
\ncoalesces into districts, flyovers, a motherboard,<\/p>\n
\ncar lots set out as piano keys, parks with lake wounds,
\ncounter-flow of arteries in red and white,<\/p>\n
\nin outlying estates, then factories with starting guns
\nof smoke that sting and make you squint,<\/p>\n
\ndown in dark fields, glow of dressed shop windows,
\ndrunks on their tightrope walk home,<\/p>\n
\nair that drops from ice to cloud to everything a city
\ncooks at once until the road meets you<\/p>\n
\nand the clay arrests you, holds you as a pulse for good,
\nso what keeps this city alive is you.<\/p>\nManuka<\/h4>\n
\nfor it lacks the viscosity to hold us up now,
\nthe sweetness to warm us on days like these.<\/p>\n
\neach time it meets a nick or slit, its headlong
\ndash through us, the blue badge it leaves where<\/p>\n
\nlet us wander through the film-sets of this city
\nas serene as manatees, generous with our time,<\/p>\n
\nand waited for, our every fight or fall distracted
\ninto dance as slow as reef-fish and as bright.<\/p>\n