by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches,
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard.
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings,
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm.
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
the bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
海潮退到這樣的時候，水便分外清澈了。
白色的石灰泥灘，層層露出水來，浪紋斑駁，閃耀亮眼。
條條小船，曬得幹幹的；根根木樁，則幹得像火柴棒。
吸收而非被吸收，
海灣裏的水弄不濕任何東西，
而且呈現出壹種瓦斯火開至最低時的顏色。
妳可以聞到那海水正轉化成瓦斯；假如妳是波特萊爾的話
妳說不定可以聽到那海水正轉化成馬林巴木琴的聲音。
而碼頭尾端，壹個褐色小型撈網正在那裏撈著
壹直在那裏以絕對冷硬的調子，打著雙節棒，伴奏著。
水鳥都是特大號的。鵜鶘嘩啦沖
入這壹泓奇異的瓦斯之中，真是小題大作，
這景象對我來說，有點像鶴嘴鋤，
壹鋤下去，拉回來看看，什麽也沒有，
於是只好遊到壹邊，樣子滑稽的擠入鵜鶘堆裏去了。
黑白相間的軍艦鳥翺翔在
捉摸不定的氣流裏
尾巴張開，如剪刀彎彎裁過
尾巴緊繃，如叉骨繃然顫動。
腥臭的海綿船不斷的開了進來
以壹種獵狗銜回東西般的殷勤姿態，
上面豎立著稻草人般的魚叉魚鉤
裝飾著垂懸吊幌的海綿。
沿著碼頭，有壹排方格鐵絲網墻
上面，掛著閃閃發光犁刀般
灰藍鯊的尾巴，壹條條的，在那裏風幹，
準備賣給中國餐館。
壹些白色的小船，仍然相互靠在壹起
堆著放，或側著放，船身破裂，
還沒修好（要是將來真還會去修的話），都是上回暴風弄壞的，
像壹封封拆開而沒有回復的信。
這小海灣內到處都丟著廢棄的信件。
卡啦卡啦，撈網上下撈著，
撈上來滴滴答答壹大堆石灰泥。
所有亂七八糟的事都在進行著，糟是糟透了，不過卻滿愉快的。