The Price of Fish

Although most of us have grown embarrassed by racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other violent exclusions which reveal the sacrificial logic of the modern state, we persevere in vivacentrism - Maud Ellman 'The Ghosts of Ulysses'

For the love of my Methodist boy,
in Fishermen's Bethel I stood
to mouth their strange Wesleyan hymns
till one verse would change me for good:

Ah lovely appearance of death!
What sight upon earth is so fair?
Not all the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare.

The wound in the side of their Christ
was the womb of the bride their men sought,
and bright were the children they'd raise,
and right all the ways they'd be taught;

for death to them had little sting
since hard work so calloused their fears:
they drowned all the fires of the Fiend
in blood and in sweat and in tears.

The warmer I grew in my love,
the less did I trust in their Lord;
I read of that trawler from Hull
we lost in the Isa Fjord.

I fled from my Methodist boy,
but tell his name under my breath
whoever I'm with for some warmth
in a life like the wrong kind of death;

through the wrong kinds of nights to find peace
I pass all the wrong kinds of ships
with the wrong kind of bands on their decks
for the wrong kind of song on my lips:

Ah lovely appearance of death!
What sight upon earth is so fair?
Not all the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare.

By Ian Duhig for Humber Mouth 2006