Koi Polloi

I sometimes post on Goodreads, which I recommend if you're bookish or like people who are.

Some ladies concluded that the fear of death being less than seductive, Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" might be poetical, but to them was unappealing. One thing led to another, and I dropped the following into the tank:

Had we but tank enough, and slime,
This koi-ness, lady, were no crime.
We would swim ‘round and think which way
To flit, and pass our long love's day;
Thou in the filter’s flow
Shouldst sweet flakes find; I in the glow
Of the heater would eat grain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
To be gefilted for the Jews.
My algaeical love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy tail-fins gaze;
Two hundred to adore each gill,
But thirty thousand for my fill;
An age at least to every fin,
And the last age should your heart I’d win.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's drift net fishers hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
The fish-knives of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall one day be filetted,
And in some fish store rudely billeted,
And then you’re gone; a corn-meal batter,
Your streamlined form shall flatter,
Or your lithe form shall one day fill,
Some suburbanite’s new grill.
The grave is fine for poet’s flesh,
But fishes seldom there do rest.

Now therefore, while multicolored scales
Sit on thy back, some bright, some pale,
And while we indulge our feeding frenzy,
With energy that bards must envy,
Now let us batten while we may
On food men sprinkle every day,
Rather at once it all devour,
Be fattened by its nutrients’ power,
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
Leave your caviar with rough strife,
And I’ll swim by and give it life.
I know we cannot make our sun
Stand still, but they say the two-legs have more fun.