Friday Food Poem

G’day,

It’s Friday. You need a food poem. Have a wonderful weekend.

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

By Pablo Neruda

Here,

among the market vegetables,

this torpedo

from the ocean

depths,

a missile

that swam,

now

lying in front of me

dead.

Surrounded

by the earth's green froth

—these lettuces,

bunches of carrots—

only you

lived through

the sea's truth, survived

the unknown, the

unfathomable

darkness, the depths

of the sea,

the great

abyss,

le grand abîme,

only you:

varnished

black-pitched

witness

to that deepest night.

Only you:

dark bullet

barreled

from the depths,

carrying

only

your

one wound,

but resurgent,

always renewed,

locked into the current,

fins fletched

like wings

in the torrent,

in the coursing

of

the

underwater

dark,

like a grieving arrow,

sea-javelin, a nerveless

oiled harpoon.

Dead

in front of me,

catafalqued king

of my own ocean;

once

sappy as a sprung fir

in the green turmoil,

once seed

to sea-quake,

tidal wave, now

simply

dead remains;

in the whole market

yours

was the only shape left

with purpose or direction

in this

jumbled ruin

of nature;

you are

a solitary man of war

among these frail vegetables,

your flanks and prow

black

and slippery

as if you were still

a well-oiled ship of the wind,

the only

true

machine

of the sea: unflawed,

undefiled,

navigating now

the waters of death.